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Edsons in England and America 



an 



d 



Genealogy of the Edsons 



By 



JARVIS BONESTEEL EDSON 

or the City of New York 



" Tlie highest tribute a man can render liis ancestors is to reproduce their best qualities, and so 

lielp to give them an earthly immortality." , 

Goethe. 



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PRINTEJ) m 
JTbe Ikntchcilvch.cr ipressts 

27 West 23d Street New York, N. Y. 

1903 






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Of this edition of " Edsons in England 
AND America and Genealogy of the Ed sons" 
one hundred copies have been printed and 
the types distributed. 

Each copy is numbered and this one is 

NUMBER. 



TO rERI'ETUATt: THE 
MEMORY OF 

MARMONT BRYAN EDSON 

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED 

i;v Ills SOX 
JARVIS BONESTEEL EDSON 



Preface 

THE only work ])iil)lished in tliis country respecting the 
Edsons of New EnHand and their extraction was 
printed in Lowell, Mass., in 1864, and entitled .4 Genealogi- 
cal Account of the Edsons Early Settled in lyvidgewater, with 
Appendices. This contribution of valuable nieuiorahilia is 
a summary of traditions and facts compiled successively 
l)y Captain Josiah Edson (i 682-1 762), Elijah Hayward 
(his great-grandson), the Rev. Theodore Edson, S.T.D., 
and John Edson (his brother), and Xahum Mitchell (author 
of the History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater). 

The conclusions advanced in the initial ])aragrai)h and 
the two footnotes on the third page of the ])amplilet regard- 
ing the name Edson being "a contraction from a word 
of three or more syllables," and the improbability of 
finding a native of England bearing it as a surname, were 
generally accepted, until recently, as determining the use- 
lessness of all further attempts to ascertain anx'thing to 
the eontrarv. The allegation that "it is certainh' not found 
in an\' l)()()k of heraldry " was evidentl>' left nnchaHcngvd 
at that time for want of enlightenment, although there was 
then among the ])ricek\ss heraldic manuseri])ls of Queen's 
College, Oxford, one in which the name of " Thomas iulson 
of Adderbmy " was so written. As printed in ilie LowvU 
])am])hlet, the paragraph reads: 

" Tlie name of Edson is most ])robably a contraction of 
Edwrn-dson, I^^dmonson, I^ldwinson. or that of some otlier 



Vlll 



PREFACE 



name of three or more syllables beginning with Ed and end- 
ing with son. Previous to the year 1600, the word Edson 
as a personal appellative is not to be found in the English 
vocabulary of proper names; and it is much doubted if it 
can be found in England, unless connected with some person 
in or from the United States. It is certainly not found in 
any book of heraldry, wherein are entered the family names 
of nearly every other person who has emigrated from Eng- 
land and settled in the American colonies. Whether this 
contraction was made or adopted by vSamucl Edson, the 
common ancestor of all of that name in this country, it is 
impossible to ascertain." 

The pamphlet, referred to above, suggests that the name 
Edson may be a corruption of Addison. " It is, in fact, 
often pronounced Addison and Eddison by most unedu- 
cated foreigners who have occasion to use the name, and 
they often conform the orthography thereto. . . . The 
fact that the name can be clearly traced to him, and no 
further, is strongly corroborative of the opinion that its 
present form was assumed in his time." 

The historical proof of the groundlessness of these su])- 
positions appeared necessary, and, readily perceiving the 
value of it, I secured the services of an experienced gentle- 
man to prosecute for me adequate searches for information 
concerning the ancestry and posterity of the Edsons in Eng- 
land and America that would serve for an authentic history 
of the Edson Family. 

This investigation in different parts of England, par- 
ticularly in the Library of the British Museum in London, 
and the registry and probate offices in Lichfield and York, 
examinations of parish registers at Adderbury in Oxford- 
shire, at Knaresborough, Whixley, and Easingwold in 
Yorkshire, at Bedworth, Bsrkswell, Over Whiteacre, Nether 
Whiteacre, Kingsbury, and Fillongley in Warwickshire, to- 
gether with interviews with James Edson at Ottringham, 
George Edson at Pickering, and Joseph A. Edson at Otley, 



PREFACE ix 

in Yorkshire, were, as will be seen, richly rewarded. The 
noteworthy success attending the researches in this country 
also revealed many interesting historical particulars of the 
careers of certain Edsons early identified with the pnlitical 
affairs of the colonists of New Entrland. Letters of iiKiuirv 
to members of Edson families residing in dirft>rent ])arts of 
the United States were the means of eliciting much of the 
serviceable data of the genealogical division of this work. 

My purpose in publishing so comprehensive a his- 
tory as this of the Edsons in England and America was 
mainly to enlighten and benefit their living descendants 
with such knowledge, of the conscientious, stalwart, patri- 
otic, and godly character of their ancestors, as might im- 
press them with an abiding sense of their obligation to be 
men as indomital^le, diligent, public-spirited, and honored as 
their forefathers were in their day and generation. The 
embellishment of the historical part of the work with en- 
gravings of places and objects still distinguishing the seats 
of the ancestral homes of Edsons in England and America 
was prompted by a consideration of the enjoyment thev 
might afford to persons desirous of ac([iiiring all the know- 
ledge to be obtained regarding the natural and artificial 
features of the landscapes environing the habitations of 
their earl)' kinsmen. 

It was my good fortune to become the possessor t)f one 
(No. 26) of the fiftv-seven co]iies that were ]:)rinted, in 1893, 
of the Transcript of the Old Parish Register of the Parish 
ChitrcJi of S. Mary ami All Saints, Filh^Jigley, Comity War- 
wicJ^, ijj(S-i6jj, containing the entr}' of the baptism of 
Samuel Edson, son of Thomas Edson, on Se]^tember 5, 
1613, as well as entries of ba])tisms, marriages, and (U\iths 
of other and earliei' ancestral kinsfolk. The Rew Arthur 
Bicknell vStcvenson, Vicar of Fillongk\\- Cluireh sint-e Ma\' S, 
1888, kindl\- sent me for soux'enir canes two pieces of a 
broken branch of the \-eneral)le \ew wliii-h has long been a 
picturesc(ue feature of the ancient ehnrehyard. To this 



X PREFACE 

obliging and courteous clergyman I am greatly indebted 
for the gift of the much-prized mementos and for the pains 
taken by him to provide me with desired photographs of 
the interior and exterior of the church, in the sacred pre- 
cincts of which, four centuries ago, more than one of my 
ancestors had worshipped. 



Contents 



CHAPTER 



I. — Thomas Edson of Adderbury (1480-1540?) 
II. — The Edsons of Fillongley (1494-1640) 
III. — Samuel Edson of Old and New England (1613-1692) 
IV. — Samuel Edson, a Freeman of Bridgewater (1651- 
1692) ......... 

V. — Samuel Edson, Second, of Bridgewater (1651- 

1719) 

VI. — Samuel Edson, Third, of Bridgewater (1690-1771) 

VII, — Edsons in the French and Indian War (1754- 

1763) 

VIII. — JosiAH Edson, the Loyalist (1768-1778) . 

IX. — Edsons in the Revolutionary War (1775-1777) 
X. — Edsons in the Revolutionary War (1777-1783) 
XI. — Obed Edson and his Son Thomas (1768-1836) 
XII. — William Jarvis Edson (i 786-1848) . 
XIII. — Marmont Bryan Edson (1813-1892) . 
XIV. — Jarvis Bonesteel Edson (1845-19 — ) 
Genealogy of the Edsons (1480-1903) 
Indexes ........ 



PAGE 
I 

36 
69 

97 



. 142 


164 


• 177 


. 227 


249 


290 


• 318 


• 339 


• 391 


• 415 


• 447 


607 



List ot Illustrations 



Southeast View of AnoERBURV Chitrcii . 
Banbury Cross, Banbury 
Northwest View of Adderbury Church 
Lich-Gate on East Side of Churchyard 
North End of Street in Adderbury 
Descent of Street in Adderbury 
Adderbury Church, Looking Southeast 

FiLLONGLEY ChuRCH .... 

Fac-simile of Title-page of the " Transcri 

ish Register," FilloxNgley 
Fac-simile from Page 58 of the " Transcrip 
South Side View, Fillongley Church . 
Interior, Fillongley Church 
Old Font in Fillongley Church . 
Southward View of Street West of Fillon 
Minute in Town Book of Salic.m 
Site of Deacon Samuel Ivdson's Mill' 
House of Rev. James Keith ^ 
Samuel Edson's Homestead ". 
Edson Tomb ^^ . . . . 

Keith Tomb ^ . 

ToMi! OF Samuicl and vScsanna I'^DSdX ' 
First and Second Protestant Episcopal Chl 

WATER ..... 

Tom I! OF vS.\.\iui;l I'J)Son, 30 . 

ChoIvISTER's CoMP.\NION . 

" Lenox " (the tune) 

" BridcI'-water" (the tune) . 

"Musical Monitor " (title) . 



( Front is f^icci 



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13 
16 

2 I 

22 

31 
41 

48 
60 
61 

63 

^5 

91 
102 

107 

I I I 

Li 7 
•37 
i3« 

171 

173 
3-M 
32O 

3-^S 
345 



XIV 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Clement Massillon Edson 

Wall Street . 

Merchants' Exchange Building, New York 

Tracy R. Edson 

William Jarvis Edson 

Mrs. William Jarvis Edson 

Henry Augustus Edson . 

Zylonite Works, Massachusetts 

Mrs. Edward Maxwell Reid . 

Marmont Bryan Edson . 

Mrs. Marmont Bryan Edson . 

Mary Augusta Edson 

Susan Maria Edson 

Jarvis B. Edson's Certificate of Appointment in U 

La Aduana, Montevideo, Uruguay 

Jarvis Bonesteel Edson 

Edson's Recording and Alarm Pressure Gauge 

Mrs. Jarvis Bonesteel Edson 

Janet De Kay Edson 

Mrs. Harry Smith Kelty 

Madelon Kelty 

Herman Aldrich Edson . 

Marmont Edson 

Edson Cottage, Shelter Island Heights 

Another View of the vSame 

Main Hall, Edson Cottage 

Edson Residence, New York 

Edson Residence, Reception Room 

Fire-proof Construction 

Steam Yacht "Claymore" 

Entrance Hall 

Steamship "Adriatic" 

Bedroom on Third Floor 

Main Hall 

View from Library Window 



S. Navy 



356 

358 
360 

364 

385 

389 

399 
402 

404 
405 
407 
411 

413 
419 

423 
424 
426 
427 
428 
429 
430 
431. 432 
433. 434 
435 
436 

437 
438 

439 
440 
440 
441 

442 

443 
444 
446 



LIST OF ILLUvSTkATiONS 



XV 



(fu tJic Genealogical Purl.) 

ASAHEL EdSON and WiFE . 

Homestead of John Edson 
Rev. Dr. Theodore Edson 
St. Ann's Church, Lowell 
Obed Edson .... 
Rev. Willia.m Bostwick Euson 
James Lafayette Edson 
John Milton Edson 
Obed Edson .... 



PAGE 
528 

591 
593 



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EDSONS 



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England and America 



Chapter I 
Thomas Edson of Adderbury 

1480-1540? 

THE name Edson is of Anglo-Saxon origin. It is [i com- 
bination of two words: Ed, a variation of the spelhng 
of the ancient term Ead ; and soi, ati explanatory suffix, 
establishing the relationship of a child to a parent known 
as Ed. 

Ead, as an Anglo-Saxon norm, signifies wealth, ])rosper- 
ity, happiness, joy, or bliss. In the early poetical com- 
positions of the Anglo-Saxons, cad is llic initial s\-ll;iblc c^f 
such com])ounds as eadfuma, authoi- of i)ros])crity ; (•(/(/- 
gieja, giver of prosperity; cadbtfc, lo\c; and cadu'da, 
riches. It has similar ])recedence in compound names, as 
is shown in Eadmund, a protector of riclics; Eadivcard, a 
guardian of property; and Eadicin, a gainer of happiness. 

The Anglo-Saxons at a very remote jKM-iod (h'stinguished 
their offspring by suc-1i descriptive names as Pcor (dear), 
Atlicl (noble), Bniii (l)ro\vTi). H7//7 (wliiuO, /•-'(/(/ (rich), as 
did the Hebrews of old, as instanctMl ])y llic titlt^s Parid 
(beloved), Amos (strong), Asliitr (l)lac-l^). Lahaii (wliile). 



2 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Subsequently the Anglo-Saxons originated a mode of ex- 
pressing the relationship of a child to a parent by adding 
the term ing, signifying offspring, son, or descendant, to the 
name of the parent or sire, as presented in the compound 
names Deoring, son or child of Dcor; Athcling, son or child 
of Athel ; Bnming, son or child of Brun ; Whiting, son or 
child of Whit; Eading, son or child of Ead. The use of ing 
as a patronymic suffix is clearly disclosed by the following 
lines forming a part of the Saxon Chronicle of the year 
547, and showing the line of descent of an Anglo-Saxon, 
named Ida, from a great-great-grandfather, Angenwit. 

''Ida IV CBS Eopping, "Ida was Eoppa's son, 

''Eoppa wees Esing, " Eoppa was Esa's son, 

''Esa wcBs Inguing, " Esa was Ingwy's son, 

''Ingui, Angeniviting/' " Ingy, Angenwit 's son." 

"In the year 804," says a learned English etymologist, 
" we find among several Eadbcrhts in the same court, that 
one is pointed out as Eddgaring, or the son of Eddgdr ; 
among several Mthelhcdhs, one is Esning, or son of Esne."^ 
The use of ing as a patron3^mic led not a few heads of 
Anglo-Saxon families to add it to their family names. 
This practice in time brought into use surnames so formed, 
many of which, by corruptions of spelling, were so changed 
that such family names as Deoring, Bruning, Whiting, and 
Eading came to be written Doring, Browning, Witting, 
and Eding. 

I The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, by Henry Sweet, M.A., Ph.D., 
LL.D. Oxford Press. London, 1897. -Pp- ^ii' 46- — Remaines concerning 
Britaine. Written by William Camden. London, 1673. Pp. 67, 106. — Eng- 
lish Surnames. Essays on Faniily Nomenclature, Historical, Etymological, and 
Humorous. By Mark Antony Lower. London, 1842. Pp. 10, 11, 12, 13. 
Also Fourth Edition, enlarged. London, 1875. Vol. i., pp. 21, 22, 23. — Words 
and Places; or. Etymological Illustrations of History, Ethnology, and Geography. 
By the Rev. Isaac Taylor, M.A. Second Edition. London and Cambridge, 
1865. Pp. 124, 125, 126. 

On the root ing, see Forstemann, Alt-dcutsches Namenbuch, vol. ii., p. 835; 
Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i., pp. 56-63, and 445-480; Pott, Personen- 
Namen,-pp. 169, 247, 553; Wright, Celt, Roman, ajid Saxon, pp. 438-441. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 3 

In tracing the seats of residence in England of the de- 
scendants of Anglo-Saxon families so named, the observant 
author of Words and Places i-emarks: 

" Some families seem to have spread much more widely 
than others. Of many only an isolated local name bears 
witness; some are f confined to a single county, while the 
names of others, as the .-Escings and the Billings, are spread 
far and wide throughout the island. 

" The Cyllings and the Wealings arc found in twelve 
places; the Dodings, the Wittings, and the \Villi}igs in 
eleven ; the Ofings in ten ; the Donings and the Sillings in 
nine; the Edings, the Ellings, the Hardings, and the Lings in 
eight ; the Fearings, the Hcmings, the Herrings, the H clings, 
the Homings, the Newings, the Serings, and the Wasings in 
seven; the Cannings, the Cerrings, the Hastings, the Ltill- 
ings, the Hannings, the Stannings, the Teddings, the Tar- 
ings, and the Withings in six; the Bcnnings, the Bings, the 
Bohhings, the Gildings, the Callings, the Gillings, and the 
Stellings in five; and the remaining four or five hundred 
patronmyic families in four or a smaller number of places." • 

The retention of the original designation Ead as a family- 
title by some of the descendants of the ancient progenitor 
distinguished by that name caused it to be used subse- 
quently as a surname with such modifications of its 
etymology that it ultimately obtained such diverse and ])er- 
manent forms as Ed, Ede, Eade, and Ecdc. The cognomens 
Ede, Eade, and Eedc arc still per])etuated by families li\-ing 
in England in the counties of Be(h'ord, Middlesex, and 
Suffolk. 

In the tenth century, as is authenticated by records of 
that period, the exj^lanatory word soii began to be sub- 
stituted for the suffix ing whicli liad carl\- been a])pended 
to many Anglo-vSiixon family names. Meml)ers of the 
Doding family began writing their cognonuMi Dodson, some 

I Words and Places. By the Rev. Isaac Taylor. Second Edition. London 
and Cambridge, 1865. P. 129, and footnote 2. 



4 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

of the Willing family changed theirs to Wilson, some of the 
Wasing family theirs to Wason, and certain Bennings theirs 
to Benson, while representatives of the Gilling family altered 
theirs to Gillson, and those of the Eding to Edson and 
Edeson. 

" Towards the close of the tenth century and the com- 
mencement of the eleventh, when the number of persons 
bore a great disproportion to the number of personal 
names, it was found necessary to add in all public acts a 
distinctive appellation for the sake of identifying individ- 
uals. Such names figure in great numbers in the records of 
all the kingdoms of Christendom up to the fourteenth cen- 
tury. By degrees, this means of remedying the confusion 
became insufficient. Those sobriquets which described 
physical and moral qualities, habits, professions, the place 
of birth, etc., might be imposed upon many who bore the 
same name of baptism, and thus the inconvenience was 
rather augmented than diminished: a total change in the 
system of names became indispensable — and hereditary 
surnames in most countries became general." ' 

"In England, when the patronymic was used, the word 
son was usually affixed, as John Adam^cn. " 

" Grimaldi, in his Origines GenealogiccE, speaking of the 
Winton Domesday, a survey of lands belonging to Edward 
the Confessor, made on the oath of eighty-six burgesses of 
Winchester, in the reign of Henry I. (1100-1135), says: 
' The most remarkable circumstance in this book is the 
quantity of surnames among the tenants of Edward (1042- 
1066) , as Alwinus Idessone, Edwinus Godesivale, Brumanus de 
la For da, Leuret de Essewem, which occur on the first page.' " 

" It would, however, be preposterous to assert that sur- 
names universally prevailed so early as the eleventh cen- 

^ "Of 'Swr '-names, DuCange says, they were at first written 'not in a direct 
line after the Christian name, but above it, between the lines,' and hence they were 
called in Latin Siipraiiomina, in Italian Supranome, and in French Surnoins, — 
', over-names.' " — English Surnames. By Mark Antony Lower. Fourth Edition, 
London, 1875. Vol. i., p. 14. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 5 

tury: we have overwhelming evidence that lliey did not; 
and we must admit that although the Xorman ("onfjuest 
did much to introduce [into England] the practice of using 
them, it was long before they became very common." 

"Whatever may be advanced in favcnir of an earlier 
adoption of family designations or surnames in ])articular 
cases, it is certain that the practice of making the second 
name of an individual stationary, and transmitting it to 
descendants, came gradually into coiiinioii use during the 
eleventh and three following centuries."' 

The ancient famil\- of KaJ, whose Anglo-Saxon de- 
scendants were distinguished by such diversely spelled 
names as Eade, Ed, Edc, Eedes, Eading, EdiJig, Edson, and 
Edesou, early acc|uired distinction in Britain through its 
male representatives by martial ] prowess and knighth' 
valor. " There never was a reigning king of that country," 
according to a long-current tradition, " that was not served 
by one or more of them mounted, from the coming of the 
first progenitor titled Ead into Britain to the end of the 
Middle Ages." Being well born and of official rank, they, 
when afield in war, had coats of mail, helmets, and shields, 
on each of which the armorial ensigns of the family were 
distinctively displayed. These designative emblems, her- 
aldically titled their arms, had descended from an early 
point of time to each successive generation, by right of in- 
heritance, and not b\- special grant or confirmation, for 
they were possessed long before King Richard III. f< )unded 
1)\' letters patent, on March 2, 1483, "The College of Arms." 
or, as it is more commonly called, " The Heralds' College." 

" Notwithstanding tlu^ numerous traditions relative to 
the granting of arms by monarchs in \ery early times," 
says Lower, "it seems to have been tlu> gci!C)\d ])ractice 
before the reigns of Richard II. (1,^77 i^c)^), and Henry 
l\'. (i 399-1413), for persons of rank to assume what ensigns 

'' English Siiniamcs. By Mark Anti in\ l.nwcr. I'oiirtli l-Mition. Lomlun, 
1875. Vol. i., pp. 15, ly, 30, 31. 



6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

they chose. But these monarchs, regarding themselves 
as the true ' fountains of honour, ' granted or took them 
away by royal edict. The exclusive right of the king to 
this privilege was long in question, and Dame Julyan 
Berners, so late as i486, declares that 'armys bi a mannys 
auctorite (if no other man have not borne theym afore) be 
of strength enogh. ' The same gallant lady boldly challenges 
the right of heralds : ' And it is the opynyon of moni men 
that an herod of armis gyve armys. Bot I say if any sych 
armys be borne . . . thoos armys be no more auctorite 
then thoos armys the wich be taken by a mannys awne 
auctorite. ' " 

The family arms of the Eads, Eades, Eds, Edes, and 
Eedes, as described by Sir Barnard Burke, Ulster King of 
Arms, the distinguished author of The General Armory of 
England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, are "azure, a chev- 
ron engrailed between three leopards' faces argent." 

Of the symbolic meaning of the colors of the shield 
and the chevron, the azure is said to signify " courtesy and 
discretion," and the argent or silver, "chastity, charity, 
and a clear conscience." The leopards' (or lions') faces, 
styled common charges, are accepted as expressing "fear- 
lessness and courage." The chevron, known as an ordinary 
charge, is regarded as implying military service; its shape 
being that of a bow or arch of a saddle. The engrailed or 
scalloped border of the chevron differences that bearing 
from one otherwise edged.' 

Leopards, according to the most eminent authorities on 
heraldry, were among the earliest devices or emblems used 
as charges for coats-of-arms. The metrical history, in 
Norman French, of the siege and capture, in 1300, of the 
fortress of Caerlaverock, on the north shore of Solway 
Frith, in Scotland, describes the blazonry of the arms of 
King Edward I.: 



^ The Curiosities of Heraldry. By Mark Antony Lower. London, 1845. 
Pp- 35. 36, III. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 7 

On his l)anner were three leopards 

Of fine goUl, set on red, 

Courant, fierce, hatighty, and cruel; 

Thus placed to signify that. 

Like them, towards his enemies 

The King is dreadful, fierce, and proud; 

For none experience his bite 

Who are not envenomed by it. 

Nevertheless he is soon reanimated 

With gentle kindness. 

If they seek his friendship, 

And are willing to come to his peace. ' 

" A lion walking and looking about him, the early 
heralds held to be acting the part of a leopard: conse- 
quently when he was in any such attitude they blazoned 
him as 'a leopard.' The animal bearing that name bore 
it simply" as a heraldic title, w^hich distinguished a lion in 
a particular attitude. These heraldic 'leopards' were 
drawn in every respect as other heraldic 'lions,' without 
spots or an}" leopardish distinction whatever. This explains 
the usage, retained till late in the fourteenth centtu"\', 
which assigned to the lions of the royal shield of England 
the name of ' leopards.' " ""' 

The early use by the Ead family of " a leopard's face" 

' En sa banier trois lupart, 

Dc or fin estoient mis en rouge, 

Courant, jcloiin, fier, c harongc; 

Par lei signifiance mis, 

Kc ansi est vers ses enemis 

Li Kois fiers, felons, c hauslans; 

Car sa inorsure ne est tastans 

i\hI, ki ne en soit enve>iiiiiez. 

A'on porquant iast est raliunez 

De dotice debonairete, 

Kant il requerent se amiste, 

E d sa pais vuellent vcnir. 
The Roll 0} Arms of the Princes, Barons a)id Knights, ivho attended King 
Edward I . to the Siege of Caerlaverock, in i wo. Edited by Thomas Wright. 
London, 1864. P. 9. 

' English Heraldry. By Chark-s HouUll, M .A. I'iflli lidilion. London, 
1883. Pp. 12, 13, 84, 267. 



8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

as its crest is regarded as heraldic evidence of its ancient 
distinction, inasmuch as that emblem formed one of the 
principal charges of the family coat-of-arms. "The right 
of bearing a crest," says Cussans, "was considered more 
honourable than that of coat armory; for to the latter a 
noble would succeed by birth, but to obtain the former he 
must have been a knight in actual service." ' That repre- 
sentatives of the Ead family had repeatedly rendered such 
service to successive sovereigns of England is not only 
affirmed by its long perpetuated tradition but also by the 
emblematic chevron embellishing its escutcheon. 

Although the color of the leopard's (or lion's) face 
forming the Ead crest was originally the same as that of 
the leopards' (or lions') faces on the shield, argent or silver 
was afterward adopted by some of the Eade descendants 
for the tincture of their crests. Describing the arms of 
the Eades of the county of Middlesex, and of wSaxmund- 
ham, in the county of vSuffolk, England, as azure, a chevron 
engrailed between three leopards' faces argent, Burke particu- 
larizes the crest possessed by them as being " a leopard's face 
argent." Ascribing to the Edes of Bedfordshire the same 
arms as those of the Eades, he sets forth the fact that the 
crest displayed by them is " a lion's gamb erect or, enfilcd 
with a chaplet vert." Although the arms of the Very Rev- 
erend Doctor Richard Eedes, Dean of Worcester from 1597 
to 1604, were, as represented by Burke, the same as those 
of the Eades and Edes, yet the crest of this gifted chaplain 
of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. was dissimilar, it 
being "a lions foot argent out of a laurel vert." In Fair- 
baini's Book of Crests, it is said that " Sir Peter Eade, of 
Norwich, uses a leopard's face argent" for a crest. ^ 

' Handbook of Heraldry. By John E. Cussans. Fourth Edition. London, 
1893. P. 186. 

^ The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. By 
Sir Barnard Burke, C.B., LL.D., Ulster King of Arms. London, 1S84. 
Pp. 311, 314, 318. — The Visitations of Bedfordshire, annis Domini 1366, 
1382, and i6j4. Edited by Frederic Augustus Blaydes, Heralds' College. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERR^A 9 

The invasion and ()c"cu])ati()n 1)y the Saxons of that 
])art of Britain, now known as Oxfordshire, began about the 
end of the sixth eenlnry. In the ninth, tlie fierce con- 
flicts between the vSaxons made it the scene of many 'hloodx' 
struggles for the ]:)ossession of its territor\'. 'I'he citv of 
Oxford, it is saiil. was four times reduced to ashes during 
the time of this warfare. 

GeographicaUy Oxfordsliire "is bounded on the north- 
east l)y Northamptonshire, north-west !)>' Warwickshire, 
west 1)y Gloucestershire, south-south-west and south-east 
by Berkshire, and east by Buckinghamshire. Tn sha]K^ it 
is very irregular, its breadth varying from about seven to 
twenty-seven and one-half miles, and its greatest length 
being al)out fiftv-two miles. The total area of the countv 
is 483,621 acres, or al)out 756 scjuare miles." Although 
Oxfordshire lies in the latitude of fifty-two degrees north 
of the equator, its climate is moderate and salubrious. 
The chief products of its fertile soil are wheat, barley, 
oats, beans, and turnips. 

" Oxfordshire comprises fourteen hundreds [or districts], 
the mtmicipal boroughs of Banbury and Chi])ping Norton, 
the greater part of the cit}' of Oxford, of which the re- 
mainder is in Berkshire, and a small portion of the munici- 
])al borough of Abingdon, of which the remainder is also 
in Berkshire." ' 

The village of Adderl)ury, in Bloxham Hundred, lies 
five miles south of Banbury, twenty north of Oxforib and 
eight\'-f()ur northeast of London. The mcrmdering Sor- 
brook, spanned by a l)i-idge near the village cliurch, is a 
picturesciue feature of the ])lace. 

In tlie time of William the Gonciueror, Adderbury was 
called Eclbitrgbcrie, a name striking!}- suggestive of its 



Liindon, 1SS4. Pj). 102, 103. — I'-'airhairn's Book of Crcsls oj' the /'\iiiiilics of 
Great /Sriliiin. Nt'W ('(liUdn. lU' Arlliuf Cliarlcs I'ox. Daxis. I"MinIiuri;li. 
1S92. V'ol. i., p, 143; vol. ii., ])lale 22:2. 
' Encyclopcsdia Britainiiin. 



10 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



having an origin closely identified with the Ead or Ed 
family. 




BANBURY CROSS, BANBURY 
Street on the left enters road running southward to Adderbury 

The acquisitive Norman, having in 1066 taken the 
sceptre of England, "had a great council, and very deep 
speech with his ' ivitan' [wise men] about this land, how 
it was peopled, or by what men; then he sent his men 
over all England, into every shire, and caused to be ascer- 
tained how many hundred hides were in the shire, or what 
land the king himself had, and cattle within the land, or 
what dues he ought to have, in twelve months, from the 
shire. Also he caused to be written how much land his 
archbishops had, and his suffragan bishops, and his abbots, 
and his earls; and what or how much each man had who 
was a holder of land in England, in land, or in cattle, and 
how much money it might be worth. So very narrowly 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA ii 

he caused it to be traced out, that there was not one single 
hide, nor one yard of land, not even — it is a shame to tell, 
though it seemed to him no shame to do — an ox, nor a 
cow, nor a swine, was left, that was not set down in his 
writ. And all the writings were brought to him after- 
wards." 

The term hide — appearing again and again in the cur- 
iously abbreviated text of the census taken by order of 
William the Conquero r, presented in Domesday Book ; or, 
The Great Survey of England,' — signifies as much land as 
w^as cultivatable in a year with a single plough, or an ex- 
tent of land equal to one hundred and twenty acres. The 
mone}^ then in use had thirty times the denominational 
value that it has at present. 

Under the name of Edhurghcrie, Adderbury is three 
times mentioned in Domesday Book: 

" The king holds Blochesham (Bloxham) and Edhurg- 
berie. There are thirty-four hides and a half there. In 
King Edward's time there w^ere forty-eight ploughs there. 
There are now thirteen in the demesne, and twenty-six 
bondmen; and seventy- two villanes [tenants] with sixteen 
bordars [farmers] having — ploughs. There are six mills 
[with dues] of fifty-six shillings and four ])ence. The 
meadow land is two miles and five quarentens long, and 
four quarentens broad. The pasture land in length and 
breadth is two miles. The wood land is thirteen quaren- 
tens and a half in length and nine quarentens broad. For 
wool and cheeses [there are dues of] forty shillings. For 
pannage [food for swine in the woods, as beech-nuts and 
acorns,] [there are dues of] tw^enty-four shillings and seven 
pence; and forty hogs when charged; but formerly sixty- 
six hogs. For a year's produce of the harwsl, [there are 
dues of] twenty-eight pounds and ten shillings. The soke 

' Domesday Book; or, The Great Survey of England, made by order of 
William the Conqvicror, in 1086. is contained in two volumes, one a great 
folio of 760 jjages, the other a large octavo of 900 pages. 



12 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

[exclusive privilege] of two hundreds [districts] belongs to 
this manor. Earl Edwin held this manor. It paid in 
King Edward's time [dues of] fifty-six pounds; now sixty- 
seven ]jounds. 

" The same bishop [Bishop of Winchester] holds Edburg- 
beric. It belonged and belongs to the church. There are 
fourteen hides and a half there. There is land to twenty 
ploughs. Now in the demesne four ploughs, and nine 
bondmen, and twenty-seven villanes, with nine bordars, 
having nineteen ploughs. There are two mills of [dues of] 
thirty shillings; and thirty-six acres of meadow of [dues 
of] ten shillings. The whole tract is three miles and three 
quarentens long, and one mile and a half broad. In King 
Edward's time it was worth twelve pounds, now twenty 
pounds. 

" Robert [de Stratford] holds of Robert one hide in 
Edburghcric. Inhere is land for one plough. He has this 
demesne with one bondman; and one villane and three 
bordars. There are four acres of meadow. It was worth 
twenty shillings; now thirty shillings." ' 

Adderbury was the home of Thomas Edson, the earliest 
of the identified ancestors of the Edsons in England and 
America. Of him there would probably be more particulars 
extant than those hereafter presented, had not the efi:acing 
hand of time obliterated the inscriptions of the once deeply 
lettered tablets covering the numerous tombs beneath the 
slab flooring of the ancient parish church of Adderbury, 
and at the same time crumbled into dust the memorial 
stones that originally marked the early graves in the burial 
ground environing the venerable edifice. The richly 
colored imagery and the elaborately emblazoned coats-of- 
arms that illuminated in days of yore the glass of the 
great windows of the lofty structure have also disappeared. 







^ A Traiislalioii oj ihc ]\cct>rd called Domesday, as far as relates fa the counties 
f Middlesex, Hertjord, Buckingham, Oxford, and Gloucester. By the Rev. 
William Bawdwen. Doncaster, 1812. Pp. S, 11, 2,0' 34- 




NORTHWEST VIEW OF ADDERBURY CHURCH FROM THE SORBROCK 



13 



14 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Of the ancient church records there is now neither trace 
nor tradition. Hence there are no available means by 
which to elicit any knowledge of the names of the wor- 
shippers who congregated beneath the high-vaulted roof of 
the stately sanctuary during the first four centuries of its 
existence. 

Moreover, it should be remembered that searches for 
data to determine lines of descent from English ancestors 
cannot be prosecuted at the present time with any measure 
of success farther back than the century preceding that in 
which Thomas Edson had his birth, who probably was 
born about twelve years before the discovery of America 
by Columbus. As Cussans asseverates, "except in a few 
rare instances, it is utterly impossible to trace a pedigree 
beyond the time of Richard the Second," (1377-139 9).' 

The village of Adderbury is historically mentioned as 
early as 1222 as the place of the execution of a blasphemous 
impostor, who, pretending to have the wounds of the 
Saviour, was condemned to be crucified there by a council 
of bishops held that year at Oxford. 

The attractive Gothic features of the conspicuous village 
church, built early in the thirteenth century, were multi- 
plied by the skill and munificence of William of Wykeham, 
a distinguished and wealthy architect, born in Hampshire 
in 1324, and also known as Bishop of Winchester, Lord 
Chancellor of England, and founder of St. Mary's or New 
College, at Oxford, who died in 1404. 

The plan of the noble building is cruciform, having, at 
the west end, a tower and steeple, one hundred and sixty 
feet in height, of admirable strength and simplicity. The 
early chime of six heavy bells, two being broken, was 
recast into eight, in 1789. The present tenor bell weighs 
two thousand six hundred pounds. The greater part of 
the original edifice, erected during the reign of King Edward 

^Handbook of Heraldry. By John E. Cussans. Fourth Edition. London, 
1893. P- 2S7- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 15 

II. (1307-T327), is comprised in the trcinse]:)ts. William 
of Wykeham rebuilt the chancel, the length of which is 
fortv feet, with a breadth of twent\' and a height of thirt}-. 

"An Architectural Antiquary," in a review of the work 
of William of Wykeham, writing eight and threescore 
years ago, says: "This l)uilding is worthy of the exalted 
taste and abilities of him whose cognizances it exhibits in 
a multiplicity of sculptures, both in wood and stone, but 
it is treated with no respect, and I must observe, that this 
chiu'ch furnishes a deplorable instance of the economy 
which seeks to avoid expense of repair by the total destruc- 
tion of its object. No consideration was here entertained, 
save the narrow one of bestowing as little upon the fabric 
of the church as might be deemed consistent with decency 
and neatness ; but surely propriety, * and with it every 
good and generous feeling, is outraged by the deliberate 
destrtiction of the architectural features of a building for 
the sake of saving the cost of needful repairs. This 
disgraceful course has been permitted at Adderbury, and 
consequently its windows, which are unusually spacious, 
present empty chasms. No more reverence was paid to the 
beautiful chancel built b\' Wykeham, than to the splendid 
architecture of Edward the Second's age. The work of 
both periods is so extremely grand, and so delicately 
finished, that one would have thought that the hand which 
was uplifted would have |)aused ere it descended to commit 
violence upon the requisite ornaments of the sacred edifice, 
and would at length have refused the thankless and unholy 
toil. 

"The celebrated scul])tures on the exterior of the nave 
remain in ])erfcct ])reservation. Their size and situation 
prove that they were designed and carved to attract at- 
tention, and secure a more than casual insjvction. which 
is all that was generall\- l)estowed upon the a(.-cc'ss( .r\- orna- 
ments of architecture. These remarkable dexices have 
escaped unhurt, and to render them as conspicuous as 



i6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

possible have been coloured; while the architecture of 
which they were the subordinate embellishments has been 
barbarously defaced. It is well and commendable to pro- 
tect every feature of the architecture of our ancient 
churches; but who can commend the taste and discrimina- 
tion which, while they urge the careful defence of grotesque 
sculptures, unfeelingly permit th^ destruction of more ele- 
gant and important ornaments? Recent discoveries have 




LICH-GATE ON EAST SIDE OF CHURCHYARD 



proved that the windows in the body of the church were 
rich in patterns of flowing tracery ; and those of the chancel 
were walled up with their own ruins, and with those 
created by the sacrilege which was at the same time com- 
mitted around the altar. These are abatements to our 
unqualified admiration of this church. 

"The six noble windows — I speak of what they have 
been, rather than what they now are — occupying more than 
one -half of the superficies of the walls, admitted a flood of 
light to the interior, which must have exhibited a specta- 
cle of uncommon splendour when the lofty compartments, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AM) A.MERK\A 17 

and the rich tracery glowed with ])ainted, glass, and re- 
flected their lustre upon the walls, themselves covered 
with enrichments in painting and gilding; and upon the 
floor, inlaid with sculpttu'ed brasses, and the various kinds 
of se])ulchral records which ])ride or liinnih't\' c;dled intf) 
fashion. 

" Recent discoveries have brought to light man\' oriijinal 
ornaments which, for a long period, have been concealed 
from \-iew. The stone altar was utterly destroyed. It was 
elevated upon a ] pavement thirteen feet broad, and seven- 
teen inches above the level of the floor, and was recessed 
eighteen inches within the o])ening of the window, the re- 
treating jambs of which descend to the pavement. The 
altar occupied a sj^ace thirteen feet one inch in width, and 
three feet eight inches in height. The wall over it is adorned 
with fourteen canopied niches of exquisite beatity. The 
freshness of their gilding and painting is remarkable. A 
few injuries wilfully committed, for the sake of expunging 
the names of the statues which once tenanted the recesses, 
alone detract from their perfection. St. Bartholomew, St. 
Simon, St. John, and some others, are visible; l)ut the 
names of two effigies, more obnoxious than those of the 
Apostles, have been quite obliterated. 

"The sum])tuous stalls, for the officiating ])ricsts, and 
the piscitia,' both on the south side, are worth}' to be 
classed with the most beautiful, and the most vSavagely 
defaced specimens of ancient architecture in England. . . . 
The pedestal of the piscnia is three feet eight inches in 
height, thence to the canopy three feet six inches; this 
space is dix'idcd b\- a ledge or shelf of stone. The back is 
panelled, and the groined roof exhibits a rose in the centre. 
The cornice under the windows terminates at the stalls 
with a small hgure, su])i)orting the- arms of \\'\-kchain and 

' A Latin name for cistern, or lish-pontl, used lo designate a nielu- in llie 
soulli wall of ancient Roman Catholic churches, near the altar, in which is a 
basin, connected with a drain i)ipe, into which is eniptieil the water with which 
the chalice has been rinsetl. 



i8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

standing on a crowned head as a pedestal. This is one of 
the niOvSt attractive ornfiments in the building. 

"The arch of the east window is supported by the busts 
of a king and a bishop; that over the stalls by the head 
of a venerable man bearded and an angel whose . shield 
is charged with the arms of the see of Winchester. The 
second window, on the same side, presents two angels bear- 
ing the arms of Wykeham, and the cross of St. George." ' 

The mutilation of the sculptured ornamentation, ecclesi- 
astical imagery, and armorial insignia of the church was 
partly the work of the agents of King Henry VIII., who, 
after Pope Clement's refusal to sanction his divorce from 
Katharine of Aragon, began changing the Roman system 
of religious worship in England, and, at the same time, 
suppressing the numerous monasteries founded in different 
parts of the kingdom. The ruthless destruction or deface- 
ment of everything suggestive of the Pope's jurisdiction, 
and the enforced surrender to the Crown of the houses, 
churches, chapels, colleges, and hospitals held by the Au- 
gustinian, Benedictine, Cistercian, and other holy orders of 
the Roman Church, soon followed. 

"The actual proceedings in the work of destruction 
varied but little. The surrender once signed, the church 
was 'defaced' — that is, the painted glass was broken, the 
stalls and screenwork were pulled down, and the church 
generally put in such a state as to render it impossible for 
the monks to return and repair it. This was done with 
the greatest haste, for the king wished the step that he 
was taking to be irrevocable. Special attention was paid 
to the destruction and dishonouring of ' reliques and 
such roten bones.' An inventory was made of the vest- 
ments, plate, and jewels. Some were sold on the spot, 
some were sent to London for the Treasury, and a large 
proportion were embezzled by the commissioners and by 

'^ The Gentleman's Magazine. London, 1834. Vol. i., new series, pp. 159, 
j6i, 162, 163, 164. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 19 

the crowd of local ])ilferers (gentle and simple) that hovered 
like vultures over the carcasses of the dead houses. 

"Then the land was strewn with ruined books from the 
monastic libraries. The leaves of priceless manuscripts were 
blown about the Oxford c[uadrangles. . . . Missals 
were sent out of the country ' by shiploads ' to be used for 
book-binding, while 'one merchant bought the contents of 
two noble libraries for fortv shillings,' and used them for 
wrapping his wares. 'This stuff,' adds John Bale, 'hath 
he used instead of grey paper by the space of more than 
ten years, and hath A'ct in store enough for as many years 
to come.' 

" It was the same with the plate and vestments. ' Many 
private men's parlours were hung with altar-cloths, their 
tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpets and 
coverlids; and many made carousing-cups of the sacred 
chalices, as once Balshazzar celebrated his drunken feast 
in the sanctified vessels of the temple. It was a sorry 
house and not worth the naming which had not somewhat 
of this furniture in it, though it were only a fair large 
cushion made of a cope or altar-cloth to adorn their win- 
dows or make their chairs to have somewhat in them of a 
chair of state. 

"What Henry the Eighth's myrmidons spared, Edward 
the Sixth's spoiled. It is difficult to say which did most 
harm and to whom the palm of mischief should be awarded, 
for whereas the zeal of Henry's commissioners was directed 
chiefly against monasteries, the zeal of Edward's was 
directed against every parish church in England. The one 
were specialists, and devoted their attention to wrecking 
anything that savoured of monks or friars or of the Pope; 
the others were iconoclasts in generab and ran amuck at 
Catholicism itself b\' destroying ever\tliing that had pre- 
tension to beauty or value. The hands of sucli men itched 
for plunder, and their eyes were wonderfull\- c^uick to 
detect superstition in anything valuable. 



20 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



"The bells were generally broken up and melted for 
gun metal; but now and then some pious person bought 
one or two for a present for another church. . . . Here 
and there, too, some generous local benefactor bought the 
abbey church outright, and presented it to his parish; and 
oftener the townsmen paid the price for it themselves, or, 
if they could not afford the whole, bought the nave, or 
sometimes only an aisle, in which they might worship as 
before." 

The distress and poverty of the thousands of houseless 
and vagrant monks and nuns, the tribulation and humilia- 
tion of the idle priests interdicted the performance of 
religious services and holy offices which had long been 
their duty and habit, the dismay and sorrow of the devout 
laity viewing the spoliation of the sacred vessels and vest- 
ments of the local sanctuaries, — all brought about by the 
implacable resentment and uncurbed enmity of King Henry 
VIII. toward the Roman Pontiff and those acknowledging 
his spiritual authority, — constitute an episode of the history 
of the English Catholics extremely harrowing and memorable. 

The changes instituted in the form of worship in the 
churches of England by Henry VIII. were, on the acces- 
sion of Edward VI., in 1547, largely sanctioned by him, 
while others made by him were openly and defiantly 
opposed in many parts of the kingdom. Revolts of an ex- 
ceedingly formidable character, caused by these later in- 
novations in the form of religious worship, in Devonshire, 
Somersetshire, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire, could not be 
suppressed in many instances except by the use of military 
force. Among the refractory Catholics of the rural dis- 
tricts whose persistent obduracy in nonconformity cost 
them their lives were the Vicar of Chipping Norton (a 
village not far from Adderbury) and the parish priest of 
Bloxham (a village three miles distant from Banbury), 
both of whom were hanged on the steeples of the churches 
in which they had been accustomed to conduct services. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



21 



In this manner, it is said, "the Oxfordshire papists" were 
"at last reduced" to conformity, "many of them being 
apprehended, and some gibbetted, and their heads fastened 
on the walls." ' 

As the field of the career of Thomas Edson of Adder- 
bur)' covered a part of the scene of these memorable events, 
he may possibly have been made to feel some of the many 
distressing afflictions of the vindictive s|)irit of this unjust 
persecution that mav have been directed against him be- 



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NORTH END OF STREET IN ADDERZURY 
C'hurcli i>ii west side bcyoiul tlie rise i>t tlie street 

cause of liis unwillingness to abandon the nse ol a tonn ol 
worshi]) to which he had long been accuslonied and to 
which he ma\- ha\-c adhcrc(l until the end of liis life, be- 
lieving that his conscientious scruples were right and in 
no way subordinate to the will of a dcs])otic king. 

One of the landed gcntr\- of Addc'rbnrw contem]H)rary 
with Thomas h^dson, was [ohn lUistard, whose immediate 



^ .4 History of Oxfordshire 
i6o. i6i, 162, 164, 172, 173. 



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EDSONS IX ENGLAND AND AMERICA 23 

ancestors were descendants of the ancient faniilv of Bus- 
tard, of Nether-Ex, in Devonshire/ 

The surname Bustard was deri\cd from a so-called 
bird, one of the largest land birds of the temperate regions of 
Europe, of the genus Otis of the ostrich species, now nearly 
extinct in England, and ornithologicallv titled Otis tarda. 

In the fifth volume of the pulilications of the Harleian 
Society are to l)e found "The Visitations of the County of 
Oxford, taken in the years 1566 by William Harvey, 
Clarencieux; 1574, by Richard Lee, Portcullis, deputy of 
Robert Cooke, Clarencieux; and in 1634, l^y John Philpott, 
Somerset, and William Ryley, Bluemantle, deputies of Sir 
John Borrough, kt.. Garter, and Richard St. George, kt., 
Clarencieux. Together with the Gatherings of Oxfordshire, 
collected by Richard Lee, in 1574. Edited and annotated 
by William Henry Turner. London: 1871." On ])ages 196 
and 197 are transcriptions from page 82 of the Queen's 
College copy of Anthony a Wood's manuscript, which aj)- 
pear under the heading: " (Bustard, of Adderl)ury.)- 

"Arms. Argent, cm a fcss gules between three pellets as 
many bustards or, ivithin a bar dure engrailed azure [Bustard], 
impaling, Quarterly, i and 4. Argent, a chevron engrailed 
gitlcs between three unicorns' licads erased azure. [Home.] 
2 and J. Ermine, three ficurs-de-lys gules witJiin a bordurc 
engrailed of the last. [Fabian.] 

• "Crest. A bustard's head argent betiveen tivo wings, be- 
tween the neck and wings as many cars oj corn gules. 

'"Ncther-Ex shall br next, whose low Situation well brooks its Name, 
which with Up-Ex, a Hamlet at Hand, received their com]iound Names from 
the River Ex; l:)olh which. Ihrciui^li 'I'inie. ha\'e sulTered much Mutation, beinjj 
in ancient Evidences written U p-Essc and Xctlwr-Esse. — Additions to the Ac- 
count of the Gentry, especially of the more Ancient of r)e\-onshire, with their 
several Coates of Anns blazoned." 

"Bustarde, Gitlcs ou a Fess beiw. 6 .\iniiilcts .^rg. j Mttllels, sab." — 77/t' 
ChorograpJiical Description, or Survey of the County of Devon, %vith the City 
and County of Exeter. Collected by the Travail of Tristram Risdon, of Win- 
scot, Gent. London, 1714, pp. 162, 166. .\ Continuation of the Survey of 
Devonshire. Second volume, ]>. 11 S. 

^ Anthony a Wood, an En.i;lisli anliipiarj', 1O32-1697. 



24 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



"Tho. Bustard of Metherex [Nether Ex?] in com. Devon. 



William Bustard of Metherex. 



John Bustard of Aderbury 
in com. Uxon. 



Richard 2, Sonne. 



Eliza1)eth d. of Willm. Fox of Barford 
in com. Oxon, gent. 



Johan. mar. Julian to Anthony 



Christian to Anne to Elizabeth 



to William 
Chauncey of 
Edgcote 
in com. 
Northton. 



Thomas 
Edson of 
Aderbury. 



Bustard of 
Aderbury 
maryed 
Jane daur. 
to John 
Home of 
Saresden in 
com. Oxon. 



Edward 



Edward to Tris- 



Willmot of Ffryers 
Wytney of Ox- 
after to ford. 
Will Burv. 



tram 

Hooper of 
Masbury 
in Devon- 
shire. 



William. John. Michaell. 



Elizabeth to Mary to 

Richard Hoby Thomas 

of Elmley in Mort [More] 

com. Wygorn. of Stapley. 



Anne. Martha. 



" Note. — In a chappele on ye south side of the Church 
of Adderbury are the foUowing inscriptions: — 

" On a great stone monument. 

" Near unto this tonihc lycth buried the hodyes of John Bus- 
tard, Esq''- & Elizabeth his ivije & Jane Bustard, wife to 
Anthony Bustard, son & heir to ye said John: which John 
had by the said Elizabeth xvii. children. And the said John 
dyed an. dom. 15 '^4. the said Elizab. an. i^iy, & ye said 
Jane an. ij68. 

" Under the efhgies of a man and woman pra)'ing: — 

" This is the representation of Tho. More gent., who de- 
ceased 2 Jan. 1586, & of Mary his wife dau. to Anthony 
Bustard, Esq', who caused this monument to be made in testi- 
mony & ccrtaine belief e of ye resurrection of tJwir bodies 
well are laid hereby. 



EDSONS IN ENC.LAXl) AXI) AMERICA 25 

" On a pillar at vc lower end of the church : — 

"AVarr this font lyctJi Elizabeth wife to Richard Blount 

(5^ JoJin Home, Esqiiiere, heir to Delajord & uuUher to Jane 

Bustard leeh Elizah. died an. doiu. 7^5 57." 

-W'ooil MSS E. T p. 222 r 

As is narrated in the same ])ublication of the Harleian 
Society, Edward Frere, who married Anne Bustard, died 
on the thirteenth da\' of January, 1564, at Oxford, where 
the remains of both were interred in the old church of All 
Saints. The toml) of Edward Wilmot, who married 
Christiana Bustard, is still to be seen in the old church at 
Whitney, eleven miles from Oxford. 

Some time after the death, in 151 7, of his first wife, John 
Bustard married Margaret Yate, the widow of William 
Pope, of Deddington, a village two miles south of Adder- 
bury. In the church of Wroxton, near Banbury, there 
formerh' was a brass plate on a tombstone bearing the 
inscription: " Here lyeth under this stone buryed Margaret 
Bostard, wydowe, sometyme the wyf of William Pope, of 
Dedington, in the county of Oxford, gent., and afterward 
married to John Bostarde, of Atterbviry, in the said 
c()unt\-, which Willyam and Margaret were father and 
mother to Syr Thomas Pope, knight, and John Pope. 
Escjuire; imd the said Margaret departed out of this 
worlde the xxv dav of August, Ano. l)ni. MnLVii, and 
hoijcth to ryse and lyve with C'hristc eternally." 

Besides the children named Ijv Wood as the offspring of 
Jolm Bustard, two other —Fraunce (Francis) and John - 
are mentione<l in their fathc>r's will. Tn addition to tlie 
])ro{)f whicli it furnislies of John I^ustard being a man of 
large ])ropert\- and a dc\-out I^>nghsh Calliolic, tlic (|uaintly 
written instrument affords in tlic \-ariously contracted 
foi'ins of some of its words a st\ic ot abl)rc\'iation nnu"1i in 
N'ogue in \\\v Middle- Ages, making thi" dccii)licrmcnt of 
manuscrii»tal caligrai)h\- of that pL-riod (hlTu'uh for i)ersons 



26 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



of this, who may be unacquainted with it. As is shown in 
the contracted form of the surname Edson, the line passing 
through the stem of the d indicates that there is an omission 
of the letter s after that letter. Therefore, in reading a 
transcript of a manuscript of the period ending with the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth, it should be remembered that a 
line through the stems of such letters as d, h, and p, or over 
a low letter, as an i, m, and n, indicates an omission of one 
or more letters after each of them. 

" In the name of God amen. 

"The day of the Concepcion of otir Lady In the yere 
of our Lorde God a Thousande fyve hundreth thirtie and 
foure And in the xxvj^'' yere of the Reigne of our Soveraigne 
Lorde Kynge, Henry the eight, I, John Busterd, hole of 
mynde, thanked be god, bequeth my soule to almighty 
god my maker and to the blissed Virggyn Mary and to all 
the Saints in Hevyn, my body to be buried where it shall 
please God. And I bequeth to the moder [mother] Church 
of Lincoln iiij- and to our Lady aulter [altar] of the Parishe 
Churche of Dadyngton a paire of vestments of white 
damaske, the name of Sir Richard Colly ns to be written 
upon the Crosse of the same Vestments. Item. I geve to 
the High aulter of the Ptshe Church of Adderbury a paire 
of Vestments of white damaske, the name of Sir Richard 
Colly ns to be written upon the Crosse of the same Vestments. 
Item. I geve and bequeth to every aulter in the forsaid 
Churche of Adderbury to the repacions [reparations] and 
mayntegnyng of the same a cjuarter of malte. Item. I 
geve to the bells there for their mayntennce and repacions 
a quarter of malte. Item. I will that my executours do 
fynde or cause to be founde a preest to singe in the said 
Church of Adderbury by the space of a yere [and] to pray 
for me and my [deceased] wife and to have for his stipende 
or wage, that yere, eight mrcs. 

" Item. I wille that Margaret my wife haue her joyn- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 27 

tour according to a dede [deed] to her by rae made and my 
londes [lands] in Ill)ury tliat I bought of my Lorde Zouche 
for [the] terme of her lyfe, in full satisfaction of her do were 
and joyntour of all my londes and tenements. And also 
that she shal haue of my goodes, cattails [chattels] or in 
redy money, at her choise; by this my bequest, foure score 
pounds, and also a doseyn siluer spones with mayden heds. 
And also the bedde we were wonte to lye in, with all such 
stuffe thereto accustumed. 

" Item. I geve to John Pope her sonne tenne pounds 
sterlinge. 

" Item. I will that if my said wife take away or imbes- 
ell any parte of my goodes whiche was her husband's, 
Willm Pope, or myn, more than is before expressed, that 
then this bequest, made to her, be voide and of noon effect. 

" Item. I bequeth to Alice Pope twenty and eight 
pounds sterlinge, in full recompens and satisfaction of her 
father's bequest. And to Jane Pope, xlviij.-^-' in full recom- 
pens, also of her father's bequest. 

" Item. I geve to Fraunce Busterd, oon [one] of my 
sonnes, of my goodes and cattails or in redy money, thre 
score pounds sterlinge. And to him and to his heires, 
males of his body lawfully begotten, Ilbury Myll [Mill], my 
londes in Dunstone and Barton and South Newnton, in the 
Countie of Oxforde. And for lack of suche yssue, to re- 
mayne to the right heires of me, the said John Busterd, 
forever. 

"Item. I bequeth to John Busterd. my yongest 
Sonne, of my goodes, cattails or in redy money, thre score 
pounds sterlinge. And to him and to his heires, males of 
his body lawfully begotten, my londes and tenements in 
Overworton and Swarforde. And for lack of suclie vssue, 
to remayn as is aforsaid, Pro\-i(k'(1 al\va\-s thai this mv 
becjuest of said lon(k's and tenements \-nto the at'orsaid 
I'^'aunce and John, m\- sonnes, li^xcept the loncU-s in Xewn- 
lon and Swarforde, which shall take eftecte immediately 



28 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

after my decease, according to my said bequest, doo take 
effecte after the death of Margaret my said wife and not 
afore. And that the said dede to her made by me, for her 
jointm-e, as is afore said, was toherowne vse during her lyfe. 

" Item. I geve to Anne Busterd, Christian Busterd, and 
Elizabeth Busterd, my doughters, as yet vnmaried, euery of 
them of my goodes and cattails, thre score pounds sterlinge. 

" Item. I geve to Thomas Edon and to his wife ten 
pounds sterlinge. 

" Item. I bequeth to Margaret Edon, daughter of the 
said Thomas Edon, twenti shepe. 

" Item. I geve and bequeth vnto Antony Yate, my 
sunt [servant], xK 

" Item. I bequeth to Anthony Busterd, my sonne, 
foure hundreth marks of my said goodes and cattails, and 
all my apparell, whiche Anthony Busterd, I make and 
ordeyn to be my sole executour of this my last will and tes- 
tament. To whom I geve all the residue of all my goodes 
and cattails to the payment of my detts and pfourmaunce 
of this my last will and testament. 

" Item. I will that the said Anthony Busterd, as myn 
executour, take the profits of all my londes and tenements, 
in all places except before excepted, by the space of thre 
yeres next after my death, towards the payment of my 
detts and perfourmance of this my last will and testament. 
And after that to haue and enjoye all the said londes and 
tenements to him and to his heires freely foreuer. 

" Item. I will that my ferme that I dwell in here, in 
Adderbury, that my said wife and Anthony my said sonne 
shal haueand occupye it togider soo longe as she is sole wid- 
owe. And afterward that Anthony Busterd haue it alone. 

" Item. I will that all my feoffees stande and be leased 
of all my londes and tenements to uze thuse of the pfour- 
mance of this my last will. 

" Item. I will that Margaret my said wife and Anthony 
my said sonne shal haue and enjoye togider the ferme of 



EDSONS JN ENGLAND AND A.Ml'.kKW 29 

Milcombe and MoUyngton, which Maister 13\ll\ng and I 
tokc jnyntly of Maister Beket for [the] term of yeres as it 
apperith more ])lavnlv bv an Indenture therof made. 

"Item. I make and ordeyn Maister Wihiam Fermcr, 
Esquire, and James Bury, Gentlemen, the ouerseers and 
supusours of this m\- said wiU and testament, to whom 
I bequeth and geve to ever>' of them, xh 

" These being then present — Thomas Edon, John Bridge- 
water, John Adkyns, and John Cocks." 

"Proved at Lambhtth, 5th May, 1535." ' 

In TJie Gentleman s Magazine of February, 1792, is a 
short description of the Bustard monuments and several 
stanzas commemorative of the character of the once-flour- 
ishing familv, written by the Rev. W. Woolston, Vicar of 
the parish of Adderbur\-, then occupying the manor-house 
and the church-pew of the deceased Bustards. 

"Yes, once they livM the guardians of the place, 
The village poor in them kind patrons found ; 
Imagination now would fondly trace 

How gav their num'rous offspring smil'd around. 

" Num'rous indeed? and lives there none that bears 
The once respected Bustards' ancient name? 
If not, awhile I '11 guard the stone that rears 
To late posterity their virtuous fame." 

In TJie Gentleman^ s Magazine of March, 1800, is the 
"Southeast view of A(l(kM-bury Church," seen ()i)])()site the 
initial page of this cha])ter, as skclclicd, in 1 7()7, by 
the same gifted clergyman, who, seated 

" At ease beneath the spreading shade 
Of clustering l)ecches on a hill's steep brow, 
Where Sorbrook's silver stream glides soft below," 

heard the peehng bells in the consjJictioiis clun\-h tower, and 
wrote: 



' Extracted fmm tlir l'rinci])al Rr.i^istrv of the rmliaU', Divorce, and Adini- 
raU\' I)i\-ision oT tlie Ili.L^li Court of justice. Somerset House, London. 
Proved in the PreroLrative Court of ('anlerl)urv. -m lIo!.;en, 15,^5. 



30 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" The sounds direct my eye along the vale 
To where the venerable structure rears 
Its elevated spire, which long has brav'd 
The pelting fury of the brumal storms. 
Yes, centuries of years the pile has stood, 
And mark'd the place where generations sleep 
Which once possess'd the spot which now we trea:l, 
Beneath their grassy hillocks quite forgotten ; 
Except, indeed, where many a stone, uprear'd, 
Tell us who lies below. Memorial frail! 
For, oh! not one in ten scarce fifty years 
Can number from its date, and hardly one 
Has seen the seasons roll a cent'ry round. 
Now busy Fancy turns to other days, 
And raises forms from long-forgotten dust, 
Enquiring when, and who, with pious zeal, 
Laid the foundations of these holy walls. 

Around the venerable walls are seen 
Fair records spread, plain tablets some, and some 
With various sculpture deck'd, and marshall'd arms. 
Here on the right the antient Bustards rest; 
A family, the village pride and boast, 
Wide-branching once with names of fair renown. 
Now quite extinct, not one remains to guard 
These monumental stones from sad decay. 
The floor presents the eye with many a name 
No more remember'd, save that here they rest; 
The stone informs us who, and when they dy'd: 
While numbers more, some e'en engrav'd on brass, 
Th' obliterating hand of Time has ras'd." 

The causes leaving the names of the nine other children 
of John and Elizabeth Fox Bustard 

" To dumb forgetfulness a prey," 

were probably the same that abandoned to oblivion the 
names of the other offspring of Thomas and Juliana Bus- 
tard Edson. Some of the Edsons, living later in Warwick- 
shire, in the same century, may have been of the number of 
their immediate descendants. 



> 

o 

m 

c 

o 

I 
c 

33 

o 

I 



o 

o 

z 

D 

CO 

O 

I 

n 
> 

H 
> 

33 

o 



31 

o 

2 



I 
n 

(/I 
o 

33 
03 
33 
O 
O 




32 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

The gift of twenty sheep to Margaret Edson Ijy her 
grandfather, John Bustard, is highly suggestive that it 
was a token of remembrance that she bore the baptismal 
name of his second wife. 

Thomas Edson s alliance by marriage with the Bustard 
family indicates that, besides being well born, he was also a 
man of considerable fortune. That no information is ex- 
tant of his personal possession of a coat-of-arms, seems 
referable to various causes, the first and most evident of 
which was the destruction of all the contemporary sources 
from which that knowledge might have l)een derived. The 
second, and no less reasonable, was that he, as well as his 
immediate descendants, cared little for the distinction 
which the possession of the ancestral arms conferred. The 
third, and highly probable one, was the remissness of the 
heralds, when visiting Oxfordshire, to ascertain whether 
he was in possession of arms to which he was legitimately 
entitled. 

Describing the character of the searches made liy the 
heralds in order to register the names of the nobility and 
gentry having the right to display armorial emblems, Falk- 
ner writes : 

"In the same year [1566] that Elizabeth paid her first 
visit to Oxford, a heraldic visitation of the county was com- 
menced. The visitation was undertaken generally through- 
out England about the same time, and consisted in one of 
the ' Kings of Arms' making a circuit through a county, 
visiting the various houses and churches, noting what arms 
appeared in painted windows or on sepulchral monuments, 
and afterwards holding a sort of court in each principal 
town to which the neighbouring gentry were summoned to 
'give proof of their arms.' If the proof of their right to 
such arms was satisfactory, they had to pay a. substantial 
fee for using them. If the arms were 'false,' they were 
broken or defaced. There is more than a suspicion that the 
collection of fees was the point to which most attention was 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 33 

paid, and visitations were no doubt a eonvem'ent way of 
raising a little money. 

" Such a \'isitation was begun through Oxfordshire in 
1566, bv William Harvey, Clarencieux King of Arms; but 
he never lived to comt^lete it. His work was taken u]) by 
Riehard Lee, Portcullis and deputy to Robert Cooke, Cla- 
rencieux, and by him finished in 1574. 

" In this visitation much valuable and authentic infor- 
mation is given as to Oxfordshire society towards the close 
of the sixteenth century. There are the names of one hun- 
dred and twenty ' commoner ' families recorded as entitled 
to bear arms, and in most cases a pedigree is given. But 
the record is by no means an exhaustive one, and the first 
thing that strikes any one in looking through the list is the 
absence of the names of certain great, though untitled, 
county families which ought undoubtedly to be there. The 
explanation of these omissions is easy. So far from there 
being any eagerness to register as gentry bearing arms, 
most people seem to have tried to avoid putting in an 
appearance, in hope of saving their fee. Every excuse was 
made use of, and many who found no excuse simply ab- 
sented themselves on the chance of ultimately escaping 
notice. The University claimed exemption from the visi- 
tation altogether, under privileges given them by Henry 
the Fourth and Henry the Eighth. Thus the visitation, 
though of great value as regards the families mentioned, is 
not of the same value as showing that a family did not 
exist or did not bear arms, because no mention of it is here 
found. 

"A comparison of the 1634 list of gentry witli tliat of 
1574 gives rise to some curious questions. One would have 
expected that in the interval of sixty years of quiet the 
numbers of the country gentry would have increased, or at 
least remained stationary. Yet the visitation lists of 1634 
only show ninety-seven families, as against one lumdred 
and twenty in 1574. Again, we shoukl exj)ect to find in 



34 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



the main the same names in the register of 1634 that ap- 
peared in 1574. Two generations must, of com'se, make a 
certain change. vSome old famihes would have moved or 
become extinct; some new families would have filled the 
houses thus made empty ; but there is certainly nothing in 
the period to lead us to expect abnormal change. The 
bloody wars of the Roses had been over a century, the wild 
religious vicissitudes of the- Reformation were quieting 
down, the havoc of the Civil War had not begun, and yet 
out of the one hundred and twenty families that were re- 
corded in 1574 we find only twenty-nine reappearing in the 
smaller muster-roll of 1634. After making every allowance 
for laxity or negligence on the part of the heralds, and for 
evasion on the part of the gentry, these figures are still re- 
markable, and the great change in the constitution of the 
county society is very difficult to account for. It was due 
in some measure perhaps to the rigour of the penal statutes 
against Catholics, but probably much more to the com- 
mercial activitv which was so marked a feature of Eliza- 
beth's reign, and which led many of the smaller gentry to 
sell their lands and embark the proceeds in mercantile 
enterprises." 

The pedigrees of families living in England in the fif- 
teenth and sixteenth centuries would no doubt be less 
obscure had the ecclesiastics in charge of the different con- 
gregations begun earlier the registration of the names of 
all the persons baptized, married, and buried by them. It 
was, however, not done until Thomas Cromwell, the Vicar- 
general of Henry VIII., on the twenty-ninth of September, 
1538, imjjosed that duty on them by the following enjoin- 
ment : 

" That you and every person, vicar, or curate within this 
Diocese, for every Church keep one Book or Register, 
wherein he shall write the day and year of every Wedding, 
Christening, and Burial, made within your parish for your 
time, and so every man succeeding you likewise, and also 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 35 

there insert every person's nanie, that shall be so wedded, 
christened, and buried. And for the safe keeping of the 
same Book, the parish shall 1)e l)()und to ])rovide of their 
common charges one sm'e coffer, with two locks and keys, 
whereof the one to remain willi xou, and the other with the 
Wardens of every parish wherein the said Book shall be 
laid up, which Book you shall every Sunda}' take forth, and 
in the presence of the said Wardens, or one of them, write 
and record in the same, all the Weddings, Christenings, and 
Burials made the whole week afore, and that done, to lay 
u]) the Book in the said coffer as afore; and ever}^ time that 
the same shall be omitted, the party that shall be in the 
fault thereof, shall forfeit to the said Church iijf iiij'', to 
be employed on the reparation of the said Church." ' 

In 1830, there were 812 church registers extant in Eng- 
land, having entries beginning with the year 1538. The 
register of Adderbury Church, with initial entries of a later 
date, discloses no baptisms, marriages, nor deaths of per- 
sons surnamed Edson. 

The marriage of Thomas Edson and Juliana, daughter 
of John and Elizabeth Fox Bustard, of which no date 
appears extant, was blessed, as is known, by the birth of 
two children — a son, Robert, and a daughter, Margaret. 
The date of the death of the father, Thomas Edson of 
Adderbury, is unknown. The inference that he died about 
the year 1540 seems deducible from the su]:»position that 
his life possibly compassed a ]icriod of three score years. 
The dates of the deaths of liis wife and daughter, for a 
similar want of knowledge, must be left un])u])lished. 



' The publications of tlie Harlcian Society, Ldiulon, 1S71, vn\. v., jip. 45, 138, 
140, T51, J52, 196, 197; The Gentleman's Magazine, London, 1702, vol. Ixii., 
part I., p]). Ill, IT2; vol. Ixx., part i., pp. 209, 210; History of Oxfordshire 
(Falkner), pp. 195, 196, 197, 198; The History of Parisli Registers in England, 
by John Southcrden Burn, second edition, London, 1862, pp. 17, iS. 



Chapter II 

The Edsons of Fillongley 

1494-1640 

WARWICKSHIRE, on the northwest side of Oxford- 
shire, is bounded on the north by Staffordshire and 
Derbyshire, on the northeast by Leicestershire, on the 
southeast by Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, on the 
southwest by Gloucestershire, and on the west by Worces- 
tershire. The county is irregularly shaped. Its greatest 
length from north to south is fifty miles, with a breadth of 
thirty-three. Its total area is 579,885 acres. In 1891, its 
population was 838,030; the number of inhabited houses 
being 172,336. 

Camden described Warwickshire about three centuries 
ago as "divided into two parts, the Feldon and Woodland 
[or Arden], that is into a plain champain and a woody 
country; which parts, the Avon, running crookedlie from 
north-east to south-west, doth after a sort, sever one from 
the other." 

The climate is mild and healthy. The soil, consisting 
of various loams, marls, gravels and clays, is generally fer- 
tile, and yields excellent crops of wheat, barley, oats, rye, 
beans, peas, turnips, and potatoes. The shire is rich in 
pasture land. It has fine orchards and market gardens, 
and is diversified by large and attractive forests. 

As registered in the Return of Owners of Land in War- 
wickshire, in 1873, the population of the county was then 
51,516, "possessing 54,022 acres, with a gross annual 

36 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 37 

rental of ;^3, 3 18,304, or about £6, 2s. ?>d. per acre all over. 
Of these owners of land only 4,622 had one acre and up- 
wards. The persons severally possessed of more than five 
thousand acres : Lord Leigh, 14,892 acres; Lord Willoughby 
de Broke, 12,621; Earl of Aylesford, 12,159; Marquis of 
Hereford, 10,282; Earl of Craven, 8,448; Earl of Warwick, 
8,263; Sir N. W. Throckmorton, 7,619; Duke of Bucclcuch, 
6,881; H.T. Lucy, 5,766; W.S.Dugdale, 5,689; Sir G. R. 
Philips, 5,397; and C. N. Newdegate, 5,318." 

Among its most eminent inhabitants may be mentioned 
William Shakespeare, John Rogers (the English divine and 
martyr) , Sir William Dugdale (antiquarian) , the Rev. Doc- 
tor Samuel Parr (critic) , Doctor Joseph Priestley (chemist 
and physicist), Matthew Boulton (civil engineer), John 
Baskerville (letter-founder and printer), Walter Savage 
Landor (author), and Marian Evans ("George Eliot"). 

The county contains 251 civil parishes, with parts of 
twelve others. Hemlingford Hundred, in the northern part 
of the shire, includes the division known as Coleshill, in 
which are the villages of Fillongley, Meriden, Nether Whit- 
acre, Over Whitacre, and Shustoke. The hundred also em- 
braces the division bearing the name of Solihull, in which 
are the villages of Berkswell and Knowle. Knightlow 
Hundred, in the southeastern part of the county, includes 
the Kirby division, in which lie the villages of Arley and 
Bedworth. 

Bedworth, five miles northeast of Coventry, and Berks- 
well, six miles west of that famous cit\', (the one litk'd 
'' Bedeworde" in Domesday Book, and the other ^' Bcrchc- 
wcllc'^), were in the sixteenth centur)' the seats of several 
generations of Edsons, of whom more liereafter. 

Fillongley, which in Domesday Book is variousl)' titled 
Felingelci, Filingclci, Filinglie, Filhigclic, and h^ihiugcr, is 
described in a recently ])uhlished directory of Warwick- 
shire as "a considerable parish and \illagc. with faniis very 
much scattered, about one and a quarter miles south from 



38 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the Arley station of the Birmingham and Nuneaton section 
of the Midland Railway, six miles northwest from Coventry, 
and the same distance east from Coleshill, sixteen from 
Birmingham, and ninety-eight from London." The parish 
is further described as being in the " Coventry county court 
district, rural deanery of Atherstone, arch- deanery of Cov- 
entry, and diocese of Worcester." 

At the time of the compilation of Domesday Book 
(1086), particular tracts of land, then lying within the 
bounds of the parish of Fillongley, were divided among a 
number of Saxon and Norman subjects of William the 
Conqueror. 

The names of the Saxons thus honored were Alsi, Lewin 
and Alwin, " probably noblemen in the court of Edward the 
Confessor, who joined William the Conqueror on his land- 
ing, or victory at Hastings (1066), and whom it was not 
safe to dispossess of their property." 

"Another grantee was Robert Dispensator, William the 
Conqueror's steward, and brother of the great Norman cap- 
tain, Urso d'Abetot. Robert held lands besides in Glouces- 
tershire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire. 

"A tract lying in the parish of Fillongley was granted 
to the Bishop of Coutances, who held land in no less than 
fifteen counties. He was Geoffrey, a Norman, and was 
elected to the See of Coutances in 1048. He was a fighting 
bishop, fought at Hastings, and served William in several 
other battles against the English and Danes." 

A section of land "identified with Old Fillongley, was 
assigned to the abbey of Coventry. This abbey was 
founded by Earl Leofric and his wife the Countess Godiva, 
about the year 1043. Here they placed a prior and twenty- 
four monks of the Benedictine order, and endowed it with 
twenty-four manors. In 1541, Henry VIII. directed that 
the noble abbey should be levelled with the ground." 

The site of Fillongley Chtirch, being a part of the tract 
given to Robert Dispensator, the following translation of the 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AAfERTCA 39 

paragraph in Domesday Book particularizes the antique 
features of the gift. " The same Robert owns lialf a hide in 
FiHngelei. The aral)le employs two ploughs. There are 
four villeins with a ])riest, and one bordar; they have two 
ploughs. There is one acre of meadow wood two miles long 
and one mile loroad. It was worth ten shillings, now 
twenty." 

The chief information relating to the priest, residing at 
Fillongley eight centuries ago for the purpose of enlighten- 
ing its few inhabitants regarding the salvation of their souls, 
discloses the first practical endeavor probably for making 
the locality a parish in which to erect a building consecrated 
to the service and worship of God. To the missionary zeal 
of that obscure evangelist and of the devout men his sue- 
cessors, no doubt, can be ascriloed the founding in the thir- 
teenth centur\' of the un])rctcntious church, the original 
masonry of which is ])artl\' incorporated with the present 
foundation and walls of the reconstructed and enlarged 
edifice. 

"In Henry the Third's time [1216-1272], eight shillings 
per annum were assigned by one Nicholas Burbache, clerk, 
(out of certain lands lying in this parish), for the mainte- 
nance of a lamp burning in the body of the church to the 
honour of the Blessed Virgin, the said anniiit)' having been 
appointed to be disposed of by Sir Thomas de Hastings, 
who for the souls of his ancestors gave to the same Nicliolas 
Bur1)ache those lands, out of which it was so charged, and 
upon that condition." 

As related by another well-informed local historian, the 
church in Fillongley, "dedicated to Saint Mary and All 
Saints, was, in 1291, valued at sixteen marks. The adx'ow- 
son [right of nominating a clergyman to the charge of the 
church whenever vacant] was sold by Laurence de Hastings, 
earl of Pembroke, to William de Clinton, earl of Hunting- 
don. In 1336, he gax'c the a(l\"o\vson !(» his ne\vl\- -founded 
priory of Maxstoke. The prior and canons of Maxstoke 



40 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

soon obtained an appropriation of it, and it continued in 
the possession of that religious house until the time of the 
Dissolution [in the reign of Henry the Eighth]." 

In the Solihull division of Hemlingford Hundred is the 
village of Knowle, or Knoll, " situate, as the name implies, on 
elevated ground," about eight miles southeast of Adder- 
bury. There, near the end of the reign of Richard the 
Third (13 7 7-1 399), Walter Cooke, a canon of Lincoln, 
erected at his own expense, for the benefit of his own and 
his parent's souls, a chapel, about a mile distant from the 
parish church, with a tower and steeple, and bells, dedicated 
to Saint John the Baptist, Saint Laurence the Martyr, and 
Saint Anne. In 1403, the fourth year of the reign of Henry 
IV., he founded for it a chantry of one or two priests. In 
the fourteenth year of the same king's reign, he procured a 
license from His Majesty to institute a " fraternitie and 
gild" within the chapel, of which, it is said, "many noble 
and celebrated men became members." From the year 
145 1 to 1535, when the guild was suppressed, not a few of 
the principal inhabitants of Fillongley joined it. In 145 1, 
the last entry on the list of "brothers and sisters" of the 
fraternity is : " Jokes Tede de Filonglcy et Alicia uxor ejus ' ' ,* 
(John Tede of Fillongley and Alice his wife.) In 1464, 
" Thomas Grene de Fynyngley, Thomas Avery de eodem villa 
Robertus Whatcock, Jofies Benctf; (Thomas Green of Fil- 
longley, Thomas Avery of the same village, Robert What- 
cock, John Bennett). In 1494: '' Henricus Edson ct Kaiina 
ux: el: de Filongley ' '; (Henry Edson and Katharine his wife, 
of Fillongley). In 1523: '' Thomas edson 't alicia ux: ci''; 
(Thomas Edson and Alice, his wife). 

The chapel is described as "a building of much beauty, 
consisting of a nave, two aisles, and a chancel. In the 
south wall are four stone seats or recesses, beneath embel- 
lished arches; and farther on towards the east, is a hand- 
some piscina. On the north side are seven stalls, and on 
the south side. six. . . . Over the rood loft are some 



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42 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

remains of paintings, comprising whole lengths of the Vir- 
gin Mary, another saint, and an angel. Some of the pews 
are embellished with carvings, and in the windows are still 
preserved some fragments of ancient painted glass." 

The entry upon the roll of members of Saint Anne's 
Guild at Knowle, in 1494, of the names of Henry and Kath- 
arine Edson of Fillongley, reveals the fact that not only 
Adderbury, in Oxfordshire, but also Fillongley, in War- 
wickshire, less than thirty-five miles distant one from the 
other, were places of the contemporaneous abode of the 
earliest identifiable ancestors of the Edsons in England. 
If Henry Edson were the brother of Thomas Edson of 
Adderbury, the inferences, that Thomas, the son of Henry 
and Katharine Edson, had been so named in honor of his 
father's father, and that Thomas Edson of Adderbury had 
also been so christened in honor of his father, seem evi- 
dently to be well grounded. 

As at Adderbury, so at Fillongley, the inhabitants were 
witnessing with approbation, dissatisfaction, or unconcern, 
the legalized acts to eradicate the evidences of the ascribed 
right of the Pope to control the religious belief and worship 
of the people of England. The most conspicuous effigies, 
emblems, and decorations in the parish church of Fillongley. 
expressive of the recent sway of papal authority, were 
either removed or mutilated, and the old forms of worship 
altered in various ways to further the extinction of it. 
Conforming, as most of the inhabitants were, to the rites 
and ceremonies of the Catholic Church, as their ancestors 
had been for centuries, it was difficult for them to turn 
abruptly to the observance of the new. Habit and prejudice 
governed them as they govern the people of the present day, 
and it was neither singular nor remarkable that they should 
be unwilling and slow to abandon practices which certainly 
had then the approval of their consciences. 

In the sixth year of His Majesty's reign (i 547-1553), 
King Edward VI. ordered commissioners to go to the differ- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 43 

ent parishes and examine the plate, jewels, and other fur- 
nishings that were in the churches. " The visitors were to 
leave in every church one or two chalices of silver, with 
linen for the communion-table and for surplices, but to 
l)ring the best of the church-furniture into the king's treas- 
ury; and to sell the linen copes, altar-cloths, etc., and give 
the money to the poor." 

The inventory taken of the plate, linen, and vestments 
possessed by the Fillongley Church, in 1553, enumerated 
the following property : 

"Two chalices, iiii'.'."" bells, a hand -bell, and a sacring- 
bell. A ])ix, coper-gilt. A crosse, w^^ half of the staf cop'" 
gilt. A cope, velvet. V vestments, with iiii'"" albes, all 
silke saving oon w''*' is saye. Viii Altar clothes lynen. 
Iiij'5 Towells. li old pillowes. lij corporys cases. lii 
valens w*'' iii black ui)per clothes hanging before th' altars. 
Two candlesticks latyn [a kind of brass or bronze]. Oon 
crosse-clothe silke. V bany clothes. li streams, a paire of 
cruets, a pax latyn." 

Richard, the son of Thomas Edson of Adderbury, was at 
that time living at Fillongley, and, by his wife Agnes, had 
three children, two daughters and one son. The daughters, 
Christiana and Anne, bore the baptismal names of their 
aunts, Christiana and Anne Bustard, and Thomas, the son, 
that of his grandfather. 

Richard Edson was a prosperous cultivator of a farm 
lying near the village, belonging probably to a manorial 
lord. He was of that class of agriculturists known as yeo- 
manry, who were severally termed husbandmen, free- 
holders, and farmers. " Men of free Nature and good 
Condition," as remarked by Risdon, "some of which have 
Inheritance of their own ; others Ik )1(1 Land b\ Lease for a 
Rent, of whom main' ])OSsess fair Estates, kee]) u]) good 
Hospitality, and afford the \-er>- Stranger lirai'iN' Welcome. 
For his Rent, wiiieh he i);i\-et]i, being small. ... he 
liveth as merrily as doth his Landlord, but according to 



44 EDSONS IN ENGLAND x\ND AMERICA 

his Calling. His chief Travels [labors] be in Matters of 
Husbandry, whether it be by Grazing, buying and selling of 
Cattle, or Tillage, wherein they are found nowhere more 
industrious and skilful in suiting every Soil with Improve- 
ment answerable to its Quality." 

" This kind of Life, I mean Husbandry, the Romans 
have so much praised, that Cicero affirmeth nothing to be 
meeter for a free-born Man than it, as being the Nurse of all 
Arts ; other Sciences being only Helpers and Attendants to it. " 

Most of the extant particulars relating to the life of 
Richard Edson are to be found in his last will and testa- 
ment, proved, on the 20th of April, 1559, "by Agnes, the 
Relict," in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Litchfield 
and Coventry, now preserved in the office of Probate, at 
Litchfield. 

The expression in the unique instrument, " I bequeathe 
my soule to Almyghty god, or [our] blessed lady Sainct 
Mary, & to all the holy company of heaven," evidently in- 
dicates that he was a devout Catholic and held to the faith 
in which he had been reared. 

" In the name of God Amen, the eighte daye of August, 
in the yeare of o'' Lorde god, a thowsand fyeve hundreth 
fyevety & eighte, I, Richard Edson of Fyllingley, sycke in 
body but not w^.^standyng, thankes be geven to Almighty 
god, hole and perfeecte, of wrytt mynde & reason, Doo 
make my testament conc[er]nyng my last Will in maner & 
forme folio wyng: ffyrste I bequeath my soule to Almyghty 
god, o'' blessed lady Saincte Mary, & to all the holy com- 
pany of heaven, & my body to be buryed w^'Hn the churche 
or churchyarde of all Halowes in Fyllongley. 

" Itm. I bequeathe to my too dough ters Chrystyan & 
Anne eithere of them twenty poundes a pece. Further- 
more, I brought howme, honestly my will pformed, & my 
debtes paid, all the resydewe of my goodes, moveable & 
unmoveable, I geave & bequeathe to Annas my wife whome 
I make my sole executryex, & also I ordeyn & make 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 45 

Thomas Edson my sone & Ric. Walker ovseers [overseers] 
to see thys my last Will pformed, & I geve to the saide 
Ric. for his paynetakyng thre shyllynges & foure ])ence. 
Thyes beyng wytteneses : vS"" Raffe Brooke curate at Astely, 
Thomas Walker & John vSmythe." 

The inventory of Richard Edson 's possessions is an in- 
structive document that not only designates the different 
kinds of household furniture and utensils of a yeoman's 
home three hundred and forty-three years ago, but also 
those of live-stock and agricultural implements owned by 
a well-to-do English farmer of that period. 

"An Inventory, taken the seconde day of January, in 
the yeare of our Lord God 1559, of the goodes & cattals of 
Richard Edson, late of Fillongley, in the countie of War- 
wicke, husbandman, deceased, as enseweth: 

" Imp^'mis, the hanginges in the hall, w^ 
ij bankers [cushions or seat-covers] 

Itm. a table w**" a forme [bench], a | •• 
chayre, iij stooles ) 

Itm. I feather bedd, ij matteres [mat-^ 

tresses], ij other beddes w^^ ^11 |^^.. ^ -^ ^,.^ ^....^^ 
their cov[er]ing, blanketts, sheets 1 
& twillyes [twills]. J 

Itm. iiij payer of flexen [flaxen] sheets. xx5. 

Itm. iiij payer of canvas sheets. xiijs. viij</. 

Itm. iij coffers [chests]. xiij.v. iij(/. 

Itm. xxti pecesof pewter, abacen [bason] ] 



- V.S". 



of Latten [brass or bronze], ij can- 



-XX5. 



del-stickes of Latten, ij saultes I 
[saltcellars] of pewter -^ 

Itm. iiij pottes, iij panns of brasso, ij I ^-^^ 
kettells, ij skylletts w^*" sk^-mer. ) 

Itm. a broche [spit], a ])aycr of cobbards 
[senders], a ])ayer of potte hookcs. a 
brunde [brand] Irnc. a gridirnc. I 
beinge of Irne -^ 



inj: 



46 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Itm. for hempe & flaxe vi^. viiji. 

Itm. for hay, & corne [wheat]. hj U. 

Itm. iij kyne, i heyford [heifer] iiij U 

Itm. ij steres [steers], ij heyfords Iiij 5 viijci 

Itm. V calves xxvi5 viiit/. 

Itm. xxti sheepe xls. 

Itm. ij pigges iij^. iiijtl 

Itm. ij mares, a colte xk. 

Itm. a wayne [a wagon], a plowghe, an \ 

oxe harrowe, ij yokes, & a tewe [a Vxb. 
chain], ij ladders. J 

Itm. a fatte [vat or tub], iiij loomes, iij ^ 

payles, a kymbnell [tub], a Ian- (_^^.^ ^.-w 
thorne [lantern], w^^ trenches & I 
spoones of wood -^ 

Itm. a coke [cock] & iij henns xijJ. 

Itm. his apparrell xxs. 

Sum totalis xxviij U ijs. vi]d. 

" Praysers: Thomas Walker, senior, Barnabye Holbach, 
sen*"., Ric. Walker, John Smythe." 

The earthly career of Richard Edson began most likely 
not long after Henry VIII. 's accession to the throne of 
England in 1509, and terminated shortly after the death of 
Queen Mary I. on the seventeenth of November, 1558. Five 
years before Richard Edson's death, the changes institutedby 
Henry VIII. and Edward VI. in the forms of public worshijD 
were speedily set aside by Queen Mary, who made use of 
the same power to turn back into its former channels the 
observance in England of the rites and ceremonies of the 
Catholic Church. "This was begun by proclamations and 
orders of council, till her majesty could procure a parlia- 
ment that would repeal King Edward's laws for religion, 
which she quickly found means to accomplish. It is 
strange indeed," as said by Neal, "that when there were 
but seven or eight peers that opposed the laws made in 
favour of the Reformation under King Edward, the same 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERK'A 47 

House of Lords should nearly all turn Pa])ists in the reign 
of Queen Mary; but as to the Commons, it was less wonder- 
ful, because the members of it were changeable, and the 
Court took care to model anew the magistrates in tlie cities 
and corporations before the elections came on, so that 
hardly one was left that was not a Roman Catholic." 

The bill passed by Parliament in November, 1553, re- 
pealed " in general all the late statutes relating to religion." 
" Severe punishments were decreed against such persons as 
should interrupt the public service, as should abuse the 
holy sacrament, or break down altars, crucifixes or crosses. 
It was made felony for any number of persons above twelve, 
to assemble together with an intention to alter the religion 
established by law." 

Queen Mary "was perfectly blind in matters of religion, 
her conscience being absolutely directed by the Pope and 
her confessor, who encouraged her in all the cruelties that 
were exercised against the Protestants, assuring her that 
she was doing God and his church good service." 

The registration of baptisms, marriages, and burials was, 
as ordered in 1538 by the vicar-general of Henry VIII., 
begun that year by the Rev. John Nicholson, vicar of 
Fillongley Church. The entries in the Church Register 
were originally wTitten in Latin. The person who was 
baptized was registered, being a male, baptizatus jnit; l)eing 
a female, baptizata jnit. They who were married, )inpti 
jiicrunt. He that was buried, sepuliits jiiit\ she, scpulta 
jiiil. 

The first ]iresentatinn of the surname Edson, in the old 
register of the ])arisli church of vSaint Mary and .\11 Saints, 
in Fillongley, is in the entry in the year (»f the Lord. 1556, 
on the twenty-first of Marc-li, when jolm (Johannes) I^Mson. 
son of John Edson, was l)ai)tize(L 

" .];///(' Dili. / 55^. 
" Martii 21. Jofics EJsioi jUius Johcs luisiiu, bapt. jnit.'" 



TRANSCRIPT 



OF THE 



©16 parieb IRcgietcr 



OF 



THE PARISH CHURCH 



OF 



^. (ntar^ an^ ^ff faints 

FILLONGLEY 



COUNTY WARWICK 



1538-1653 



WITH 



(^ e^orf (Recount of i^c C^uvc^, f^e Q$eff6, (^tonumentg, (ic, 

FIFTV-SEVEN COTIES (ONLY) PRINTED BY SUBSCRIPTION 

W. HENRY ROBINSON 

STEAM PRINTING WORKS 

MDCCCXCIII 



/^// riglils reserved 

FAC-SIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE "TRANSCRIPT OF THE OLD PARISH REGISTER 



{ 



EDSONS IN ENGLAXl) AXI) AMl-:kICA 49 

The marriage of Thomas Overton and I^^hzabeth lulson, 
on the thirtieth of Octol^er, 1558, is entered: 

" Ajuu^ Dni. 1558. 
" Octobris jo. Thomas Overton ct FAizabcth Edsiiu, nupt. 

fitcr." 

The burial, on the twentN'-fourtli of Februar}', 1560, of 
Isabella, wife of Thomas Edson, is entered: 

"Anno Dni. 1560. 
" Fcbruarn 24. Isabella uxor Thome Edsun, sepull. fit it." 

The baptism of Elizabeth, the daughter of Thomas 
Edson, on the twenty-first of August, 1562, is registered: 

"Anno Dni. i ^62. 
" Angnsti 21. ElizabetJi Edsun Jilia Thome Edsuii, bapt. 
jttit." 

Thomas Edson, the father of Elizabeth, baptized on the 
twenty-first of August, 1562, was the son of Richard Edson, 
who died in 1558. He and his wife Ellen were the parents of 
this daughter and of four sons: Nicholas, Richarcb Thomas, 
and William. All are mentioned by the father in his last 
will and testament, except William, who lived onl)' twenty- 
one days after his baptism on the first of November, 1576. 

Thomas Edson appears to have taken the same farm 
which his father was cultivating at the time of his decease. 
Three years later, as it seems, he took unto himself the 
wife, who, in 1562, bore him Elizabeth, their lii^sl eliild. 
The responsibilities of a married man were, tlu'refore, 
assumed bv him in the tliird _\ear of Oueen Ii!lizabeth's 
reign (1558-1603), in whieli also he ended his earthl\- life 
in 1588. 

The people of the rural districts of England, no less than 
those living in the c-ities, a])parently learned with a natui-al 
contrarietv of feeling, either of jox' or dis])leasure, or uncon- 
cern, the character of Queen Elizabeth's behests regarding 



50 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the religious belief and form of worship that they would be 
required to accept and observe. 

As is related, "the public religion continued for a time 
in the same posture the queen found it ; the Popish priests 
ke]3t their livings, and went on celebrating mass. None of 
the Protestant clergy who had been ejected in the last 
reign were restored; and orders were given against all in- 
novations without public authority. Though the queen 
had com])lied with the changes in her sister's reign, it was 
well known she was a favourer of the Reformation; but 
her majesty ])roceeded with great caution for fear of raising 
disturbances in her infant government. No prince ever 
came to the crown under greater disadvantages. The 
Pope had pronounced her illegitimate; upon which the 
Queen of vScots ])ut in her claim to the Crown. All the 
bishops and clerg}' of the present establishment were her 
declared enemies. The nation was at war with France, and 
the treasury exhausted; the queen, therefore, by the advice 
of her privy council, resolved to make peace with her neigh- 
bours as soon as possible, that she might be more at leisure 
to proceed in her intended alterations of religion, which, 
though ver)^ considerable, were not so entire as the best and 
most learned Protestants of those times desired. The 
queen inherited the spirit of her father and affected a great 
deal of magnificence in her devotions, as well as in her 
court. She was fond of many of the old rites and cere- 
monies in which she had been educated. She thought that 
her brother [Edward VI.] had stripped religion too much of 
its ornaments; and made the doctrines of the church too 
narrow in some points. It was therefore with difficulty 
that she was prevailed on to go the length of King Edward's 
reformation." 

By an act of Parliament in 1559, no person could be 
punished for exercising the religion prevailing in the last 
year of King Edward's reign. It was also enacted that all 
persons in any public employment, whether civil or ecclesi- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 51 

astical, should be " obliged to take an oath in recognition of 
the queen's right to the crown, and of her supremacy in all 
causes ecclesiastical and ci\'il, on penalty of forfeiting all 
their promotions in the church, and of being declared in- 
capable of holding any pubhc office." 

I^ 1559' Queen Elizabeth enjoined upon her loving 
subjects obedience to fifty-three articles, of which the 
following may here be presented as exemplifying their 
character 

" I. All ecclesiastical persons shall see that the act of 
supremacy be duly observed, and shall preach four times 
a year against yielding obedience to foreign jurisdiction. 
2. They shall not set forth or extol the dignity of any 
images, relics, or miracles, but shall declare the abuses of 
the same, and that all grace is from God. 3. Parsons shall 
preach once every month upon works of faith, mercy, and 
charity, commanded by God; and shall inform the people 
that works of man's devising, such as ]3ilgrimages, setting 
up of candles, praying upon beads, et cet., are offensive to 
God. 6. Within three months every parish shall provide 
a Bible, and within twelve months Erasmus's ])araphrase 
upon the Gospels in English, and set them up in their sev- 
eral churches. 20. Holy days shall be strictly observed, ex- 
cept in harvest time after divine service. 23. Also, they [the 
curates] shall take away, utterly extinguish, and destroy 
all shrines, coverings of shrines; all tables, candle-sticks, 
trindals (tapers), and rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, 
and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrim- 
ages, idolatry, and superstition, so that there remain no 
memory of the S£ime in walls, glass windows, or elsewhere, 
within their churches and houses ; preserving, nevertheless, 
or repairing, both the walls and glass windows; and they 
shall exhort all their parishioners to do the like in their 
several houses. 46. Overseers in every ])arish shall see 
that all the parishioners duh' resort to church ; and shall 
present defaulters to the ordinary. These injunctions were 



52 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

ordered to be read in the churches once every quarter of 
a year." ' 

Thomas Edson, as evidenced by the introductory clause 
of his last will and testament, was a devout English church- 
man, wisely regulating his life in accordance with his loy- 
alty as a subject of Her Majesty the Queen. He, as would 
seem, martially served Her Majesty in one or more of the 
wars which England waged during the period of his man- 
hood. The two swords and the dagger which he possessed, 
together with the saddle, bridle, the boots and spurs, seem 
to verify the tradition long current with the Edsons in Eng- 
land that there was never a sovereign of that country whom 
one or more of their ancestors had not served in a war as a 
mounted soldier. 

His last will and testament, as that of his father, is a 
quaint and valuable memorial of his day and generation : 

" In the name of God Amen, the xiiiith day of Marche, 
in the yere of our lorde god, 1586, I, Thomas Edsun of 
Fillongley, in the countie of Warwicke, husbandman, beying 
sycke in bodie but whole in mynde and of good and perfect 
remembrance, do ordayne and make this my last wyll and 
testament in manner and forme followyng: Fyrst I be- 
queth my soole unto Almightie God, trusty ng to the merites 
of Jesus Christ to be saved and my bodye to be buryed 
where yt [it] shall pleyse god and my friends. 

" Also I gyve and bequethe unto Richarde my sonne 
iiij poundes. Also I gyve and bequethe unto Thomas my 
Sonne iij poundes. Also I gyve and bequethe unto my 
doughter Elizabeth x poundes. Also I gyve and bequethe 
unto Nicholas my sonne all my yron ware that belongeth to 
husbandry with waynes [wagons], plowes, harrowes, yokes, 
tewes [chains], culter [coulter, front part of a plow], shares 
[blades of a plow], wayne rope, nagers [augers], gowges 
[gouges], chesylles [chisels], a mattoche, and a spade. 

' The History of the Puritans or Protestant Noncomformists. By Daniel 
Neal. London, 1837. Vol. i., pj). 85, 86, 88, 89, 103, 104, 105, 106. 



EDSONS TN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 53 

" Also I gyve and bequethe unto Thomas Melodye xiid. 

"The rest of my goodes nnbequethed, my dettes payd, 
and my bodye honestly brought whome [home], I gyve and 
bequethe them unto Elyn my wyffe and Nicholas my sonne, 
whome I make Executors of this my last Wyll and Testa- 
ment, and I wyll that Thomas Oughtoti, Martyn Holbache, 
and John Farmer shal be overseers of this my last will & 
testament, and I wyll that they shall have for theyr paynes- 
takyng, every one of them, xiit/. These beyng witnesses: 
Thomas Gilbert, vicar, Martyn Holbache, and Thomas 
Oughton, with other ms." 

The instrument was proved on the twelfth of February, 
1587-8, by both executors. 

The Rev. Thomas Gilbert, Vicar of Fillongley church, was 
in charge of it from the fourteenth of March, 1586, to 1608. 

The property of which Thomas Edson was possessed at 
the time of his death, in 1588, was in part that which he 
had inherited from his parents, and the remainder that 
which he had later acquired. The items of the inventory, 
as also do the names of several apartments of his home, 
afford good grounds for the inference that he was a man of 
considerable wealth and importance, besides a yeoman of 
intelligence and abilty. 

"A trewe Inventory of the goods & cattells of Thomas 
Edsune of Fyllyngley, in the county of Warwyck. husband- 
man, late dessessed — taken & praysed by Martin Holbache 
of Fyllyngley, Wyllyam Walkar of the same, barnabe 
brereley of the same, taken cK: praysed tlie .wiiith day of 
Marche in the xxix yeare of oure soveran Lady. P>liz:i]>cth, 
by the grace of God, of England Fra. & Ire., queene. 

" Imps, in the haidc [halll, two tabls wi''^ 

fourmes [seats] & benches xi.v. \iii./. 

Itm. iij chears, iij stooles iiJ5. iiijJ, 

Itm. the paynted clothes [hangings] in 

the hawle, iijs. iiijJ. 



54 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



Itm. the copbord [cupboard] in the hawle, 
Itm. in brase : fowre pots, iiij panes, five 

kettels, one dobnet, two chafyng 

dysses, one scymer, 
Itm. foure candlestykes 
Itm. in pewter: xi platters, vii pewter 

dysses, vi saucers, two salts, one 

pot, vi porringers, vi tin spones, 
Itm. to [two] pewter bols [bowls], 
Itm. in the parlor: one cupboard, too 

standyng beds 
Itm. vi cofars [chests] and one forme 
Itm. payntel clothes [hangings] in the 

parlor, 
Itm. foure bedhyllyngs [coverings], one 

blanket, fowre twyles [twills] 
Itm. too feather beds, foure matres, fyve 

bols tars, iij pyllars, 
Itm. in wearyng clothes: one cloke, too 

coates, iij. dowblets, one payr of 

hose, too hats, 
Itm. V yerds of grene clothe for c[uys- 

sens [cushions], 
Itm. one purse, one gyrdell 
Itm. one forme [bench], too bourds 

[boards], a standynd [stained ?] 

stole, a paire of valances 
Itm. thre hechils [hatchels for combing 

flax or hemp], 
Itm. one boultyng [bolting-cloth, sifter] 

whiche a knedyng troghe [kneading 

trough], thre theles [thills, boards,] 

and a stock [rolling-])in ?], 
Itm. iiij barrels, v lomes [looms], two 

chornes [churns], & other imple- 
ments 



X5. 



iij H. 
iiij.?. 



XX1J5 

viijd. 

X.XVS. 
XX5. 

iiJ5. 

XX V5. 



\h 



lull 

xxvi5. viiiJ. 

vs. 

viiid 

iiij5. 
xviijJ. 



X5. 



XX5. 



KDSOXS TX FAT.LAXD AND A:\IERTCA 55 

Ttm. V. chesfats [cheese vats or tul)s], ii] 

shuters, one lanterne \]s. v'ul. 

Itni. in the h>'gh chamber, ij bedstyds, 
too tables, too ])eir of testels [tes- 
ters], two fats [tubs], and a bard, cK: 
paynted clothes xi.v. 

It. foure spynyng wheles 

Itni. a saddell, a brydell, one ])cMr of 

boots, one peir of spurs, iiijj 

Itni. thre flytches of bakun [bacon] and 

thre of befe [beef], x\'i,s-. 

Itm. too swords, and a dagger iij.s-. 

Itni. in wole [wool] & yerne [yarn] x\i 

pound. vs. iiijJ. 

Itm. V flaxen shetes, seven canvas shetes, 
a dozen & a half of table napkins, 
iii bord [table-board] clothes, too 
towels, iii'i a. 

Itm. foure pillow l)cirs [slips]. iiij.v. 

Itm. one steepyng fat [vat or tub], a 
garner, a chese presse, thre tr\-ne of 
fellyes, xii shelbords, too hundrelh 
of lath, xxi.s-. 

Itm. ij laders, too bonis, one forme, \'i.v. 

Itm. in the barne, Rye, otes, & hay liij.s-. iiii(/. 

Itm. one Ircn-boud wa\"n, too carls, one 
wayn body, X: a Baric Roule 
[Rowel "^] iiii ii. 

Itm. ])lowes, lK: harrowes, & sleads, xx5. 

Itm. too cartrops [cart-ropes], xiic/. 

Itm. \-iij yokes, iiii Irrntewes, viii.v. 

Itm. foure axel! Ireese, x\'i(/ 

Itm. too axes, thre hatclu^ts, fy\'c> l)\-lls, 
one ads, one enllyngc sawc. one 
hand sawe, & oilier hnplenienls of 
Iren, X5. 



56 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



Itm. vi strik [strike] of ots [oats], 

Itm. vi nawgars, chissels, & fyles, loks, 
& fitters, with other implements of 
Iren. 

Itm. iij colters, too shares 

Itm. too broches, one peir of cobbards, 
one brandiron, one gridiron, one 
frying pan, one peire of tongs, one 
fyer shouel, pothokes, & pothangers 

Itm. in sawen bords & montens [fen- 
cing], 

Itm. thre sakes, too lyttell bagges, a 
wyndow shete, & a heare [hair] 
clothe, 

Itm. foure wayles, one dissen of dishes, a 
dosen of trenchers 

Itm. one handiron 

Itm. in tymber & fyer wood, one grynde- 
ston 

Itm. viij pykforkes [pitchforks], one 
dong fork, one mattock, too show- 
els, one spade, 

Itm. a peir of slead brydels, 

Itm. in lynnen yern, thre guyshens, two 
peir of showes 

Itm. fom'e hennes & a coke 

Itm. one oxe, too steares 

Itm. too mares 

Itm. foure kyne, thre heyfars, 

Itm. foure calves 

Itm. vi shepe, and too swyne 

Itm. the Rye of the grownd 

Itm. Ots on the grownd 



VIS. 



xu]s. uijd. 
vs. 



vn]s. 
iijs. iiij(i. 



VIS. 

xviJ. 
ii^. 

xiijj. iiijJ. 



vs. 



vs. 

ii5. 

viii. xiiis. 

iij li. 

xiij H. 

xli5. 

xxviij^. 

xh5. 

XXX5." 



In the same century there were living at Berkswell, in 
Warwickshire, certain kinsmen of the Fillongley Edsons. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 57 

One of the Berkswell Edsons, John Edson, whose remains 
were interred in the churchyard in that ])lace, in his last 
will and testament, proved by his wife Elizabeth, the execu- 
trix, on the twenty-sixth of A])ril, 1563, named in it his 
elder son, John, and his _\'()uni^er son, William, and his 
brother, Simon Edson. One of the ap])raisers of his ])r()- 
perty, inventoried on the sixteenth of December, 1562, was 
Rafe Shakespere. 

Another famih^ that of Richard Edson, resided at Bed- 
worth, in Warwickshire. In the will made by him, on the 
second of Januar\-, 1579, and i^roved on the fifteenth of Octo- 
ber following, he expressed a wish to have his bod}'' entombed 
in the churchyard of Bedworth. Among the heirs named 
in his will are those of Richard Edson, the son of his brother, 
Nicholas Edson; Robert, the son of the same brother; and 
Johan, daughter of his brother. The anas Edson, the three 
children being at that time under age. He bequeathed to 
his brother, William Edson, his apparel. His father-in-law 
was Humphrey Townsend of Bedworth, whom he ai)pointed 
one of his executors. His brother, Nicholas Edson, was a 
witness of his signing the will. 

The wills and inventories of the Edsons of Fillongley, 
Berkswell, and Bedworth, are preserved in the office of 
probate at Litchfield, in vStaffordshire, sixteen miles north 
of Birmingham, where, under the several gi\'en dates, they, 
were proved in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of 
Lichfield. 

Thomas, the third son of Thomas and Ellen Edson, ba]i- 
tized at Fillongle}' on the .seventh of Sc])teml)er, 1572, was 
married there, bv the Rev. Thomas (lilliei-t, ( »n tlie first of 
November, 1596, to Elizabeth Copson, as is entcMvd in thc^ 
parish register in Latin: 

" . !;/;/(' Jhii. 1 =^g6. 
'' Novenihr. i. Thomas Edsit)i cl Elizabeth Copsini, iiitpt. 
juerr 



58 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Seven children were born to them there, two daughters 
and five sons: WilHam, baptized on the fourth of March, 
1598; Anna, on the twenty - second of August, 1602; 
Nicholas, on the sixth of March, 1607; Amphillis, on the 
twelfth of August, 16 10; Saniuel, on the fifth of September, 
1 61 3; Joshua, on the second of February, 16 16; and 
Walter, on the thirtieth of January, 1619. 

Nicholas, their second son, died at Fillongle}^ on the fourth 
of April, 1608, and Walter, their fifth, on the first of Decem- 
ber, 1633. 

The father, Thomas Edson, born in the thirteenth year of 
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, lived through the remainder of 
it, and through the whole of that of James the First (1603- 
1625), and probably that of Charles the First (1625-1649). 
When fifteen years old, his youthful imagination was in- 
tensely excited by the startling reports of the fitting out by 
Spain of 129 ships and transports carrying 3000 cannon and 
20,000 seamen and marines, that were to be augmented by a 
force of 34,000 land soldiers from the Netherlands, for the 
invasion of England and the dethronement of Her Majesty 
Queen Elizabeth. Then shortly followed the thrilling in- 
telligence that thirty English vessels of war of less formida- 
ble armaments, under the command of Admiral Charles 
Lord Howard of Effingham, had, in July, 1588, attacked 
the Invincible Armada in the English Channel and rendered 
the stupendous undertaking of Spain ingloriously futile. 
.He was intimately acquainted with some of the im- 
mediate kinsfolk of the famous poet and dramatist, William 
Shakespeare, whose birthplace was at no great distance 
from Fillongley. The gunpowder plot of 1605, the execu- 
tion of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the outbreak of civil war 
between King Charles the First and his supporters the 
Cavaliers, on the one side, and the Parliament and its ad- 
herents on the other, in 1642, were events with which he 
was contemporary. He recognized, no doubt, as one of 
his kindred, Henry Edson, one of the "eighteen gentle- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 59 

men of the ordnance," at that time an officer in the 
Royal Arm3\' 

Nicholas Edson, the brother of Thomas, was, in 1590, 
appointed one of the su])ervisors of the parish of Fillongley, 
whose duty it was to have the care of tlie roads, the poor, 
and other parochial affairs. In 1591, Nicholas Edson was 
appointed a warden of Fillongley Church, and again ap- 
pointed one of the parish supervisors, as he was afterward 
in the years 1606, 1607, 1608, and 161 8, and alternately to 
the office of churchwarden. His brother Richard, in 1604, 
received the appointment of parish clerk. 

Thomas Edson, at the age of sixty-four years, was hon- 
ored with the office of churchwarden. After the year 1636, 
nothing more is recorded of him. 



^"The Lift of the Army Raifed vmder the command of his Excellency 
Robert, Earle of Essex and Ewe, Vifcount Hereford, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, 
Bourchrir and Loraine: Appointed Captaine General of the Army Imploycd for 
the defence of the Proteftant Religion, the fafety of his Majefties Perfon and 
Parliament, the prefervation of the Lawes, Liberties and Peace of the Kingdom 
and protection of his Majefties Subjects from Violence and oppreffion. 

"With the names of the feverall Officers belonging to the Army. 

"Eighteen Gentlemen of the Ordnance. 



I 


Tho. Holyman. 


10 


Joshua Sing. 


2 


Robert Barbar. 


1 1 


George Ranfoni. 


3 


Patrick Strellay. 


12 


Samuel Barry. 


4 


Adward Wafe. 


13 


Daniel Barwick. 


5 


Anthony Hey ford. 


14 


Tho. Rawfon. 


6 


Robert Bower. 


'5 


Tlid. Sip])ence. 


7 


Henry Edson. 


16 


Tho. C'ro.s.se.''" 


8 


James Franckline. ^^ 


17 


Tho. Ayres. 


9 


Richard Honey. 


iS 


AVilliam Hickson 



"yS. Slain at Exeter. 99. Slain at the fiege of Sherborni' ("aftle, .\ug. 15, 
1645- 

"... "At Surrexfey. . . . vS^rjcant Keafon." 

"The List of the Armie.* *"This lift of the Parliament .\nn\- exifts in a 
feparate form as a fmall 4to. of twenty j)ages. It \-aries fi-om the document 
here represented but flight!}-." — From The Army Lists of the Koinniltcad ami 
Cavaliers, containing the names of the officers in the Royal and Parliament 
Armies of 1642. Editid by Edward Peacock, F.A..\. Second edition. Lon- 
don, 1S74. Pp. 24, 9.5. 



Anno Dni. 1613. 

Aprilis 2.— Anna uxor Radulphi Allen sepult fuit 

6. — Johes filius Gulielmi Tarlton bapt fuit 

8. — 'I'lio : Stone sepult fuit 

18. — Tho : filius Danielis Oughton bapt fuit 

25. — Gulielmus filius Gulielmi Holbech „ ,, 

25. — Isabella filia Gulielmi Kenon „ „ 

26. — Isabella uxor Johis Wright sepult fuit 

Maii 10. — Isabella Bremer „ „ 

Junii 7. — Margarita uxor Johis Rockett „ „ 

Augustii 8. — Elizabetha filia Sampsonis Butler bapt fui: 

,, 29. — Leonardus filius Rich : Greene ,, ,, 

SepBris 5. — Katherina filia Gulielmi Willes ,, ,, 

„ 5.— Samuel filius Tho : Edson „ ,, 

„ 16. — Elizabetha filia Gulieimi Smith ,, „ 

„ 19. — Richardus filius Rich : Morell „ ,, 

„ 19. — Gulielmus filius Johis Capper ,, ,, 

„ 26. — Richardus filius Michaelis Kimberlye ,, „ 

Octobris 17 — Robertus filius Henrici Breerlye „ „ 

Novembris 2 — Elnar Shaw sepult fuit 

„ 21.— Robertus filius Gulielmi Goddard bapt fuit 

FAC-SIMILE OF THE LOWER PART OF PAGE 58 OF THE "TRANSCRIPT OF THE 

OLD PARISH REGISTER " 



60 



I 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



6i 



The baptism of his tliircl scm, Siimiicl, is entered in the' 
''Old Parish Register" tnider the Latin heachng: 

''Anno Dni [Domini], i6ij/' 

" Sepbris 5. — Sanntel filiits TJio : EJson bapt. juit." 
[September 5. — Samuel son of Thomas Edson was 
baptized.] 

The descriptive sketch of the church contained in the 
Transcript of the Old ParisJi Register was "compiled from 
notes kindly supplied by Thc^iias Garner, Esq. (of Messrs. 
Bodlev & Garner, the eminent architects).'' 




SOUTH SIDE VIEW OF FILLONQLEY CHURCH AND THE OLD YEW IN THE CHURCHYARD 

Kroiii a recent photograph 



"The church of Fillonglc}' is an inU>rcsting one and has 
some remarkable features. 

" It consists of a chancel and a chapel on the nortli side, 
a nave without aisles, and a western tower. 

"The earliest part of the Ituilding is tlu^ c\'isl cmkI, in 



62 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

which the remains of what was probably a Norman triplet 
were discovered during the restorations, and which may be 
seen in the wall on the south side of the decorated east 
window. Only the southern jamb, a ]:)lain, wide splay re- 
mains, and there is no detail which would enable one to fix 
the date. There are some traces of painting on it. The 
chancel seems to have been several times repaired, and 
nearly rebuilt, and cannot have been well constructed in 
the first instance. 

" The east window is of the first half of the fourteenth 
century, and resembles in character the window of the nave. 
It may have been done at the same time. The south wall 
seems to have been quite rebuilt, and very late and debased 
perpendicular windows inserted, most likely towards the 
middle of the sixteenth century. They were unfortunately 
dreadfully shattered, and have had to be much renewed. 

" The chapel on the north side is also late perpendicular, 
but earlier than the chancel. It has some fragments of 
glass in the north window. The east window of the chapel 
is late, and has been blocked in the lower part, forming a 
sort of reredos. 

" The arches between the chapel and chancel had been 
removed in modern times, and there is nothing left to show 
what the ancient ones were like. 

" A rude hole had been cut through the northeast corner 
of the nave, to form a communication with this chapel, so 
that new arches had to be made in these cases; and the 
chancel roof, which was also of modern and very bad con- 
struction, was renewed. 

"The nave is the finest and most interesting part of the 
church. It is unusually wide, being nearly thirty-one feet 
span, and seems to have an imposing and very high pitched 
roof. It is very similar to the neighbouring church of 
Shustoke, and has, like that, been well built with ashlar 
inside and out. It is good plain, decorated work, and be- 
longs to the first half of the fourteenth century. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



63 



"The chancel arch, as is generally the case with these 
wide-span churches, is somewhat narrow, in order to leave 
space for the altars on each side. The brackets for the 
images remain in the south side, but have been destroyed 
on the north side by the before-mentioned hole in the 
chapel at the side of the chancel. 

" Pretty little brackets wnth heads remain at the spring- 
ing of the chancel arch for the rood beam, and similar 
brackets existed at vShustoke before the fire. There seems 
to be some indication of the stone base of a screen. 

"The side window^s are good tri])let lights, the centre 
one rising to the head of the window, and have some very 




INTERIOR OF FILLONQLEY CHURCH LOOKING EASTWARD TOWARD THE CHANCEL 

fine fragments of stained glass, canopies, etc., and rich 
borders. 

" There are two doors opposite each other (the one on the 
north side has been blocked up), and west of these the win- 
dow's are two lights of similar character to the three lights. 
The high ])itched decorated root is (|uite gone, but its 
shai)e can be traced by llie weather nionlding on the 
tower. . . . 



64 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

"A late perpendicular clerestory has been added to the 
walls, raised considerably. Nothing remains of the per- 
pendicular roof, which seems to have had some good carved 
bosses, as it was removed early in this century, and re- 
placed by a modern slated roof. A panelled ceiling was 
added at the restoration in 1887. 

"The principal features of the restoration in 1887 may 
be summarised in the substitution of open work sittings for 
the unsightly pews and gallery which before existed; a 
handsome panelled wood ceiling for one of ]3laster, and an 
entirely new open roof in the chancel; while the whole 
church was entirely new floored, and plaster removed from 
the walls and windows. The exterior of the church was 
also much repaired. The church has been enriched by 
many beautiful gifts of parishioners and friends. The 
whole cost of the work of restoration, with fittings, was 
;^2,649. It was carried out by Messrs. Bodley & Garner. 

" The old battlements were removed at the time when 
the new roof was done, but an old drawing (in possession of 
Mr. R. Hollick) has preserved their general appearance, and 
they have now been reproduced as nearly as possible. 

" There are some remains of late, but rich and hand- 
some, wood- work, and one very good square bench end, 
which is valuable as shewing the designs of the old seats. 

" The tower is very early English in its two lower stages, 
but quite plain ; so that it is difficult to say much about its 
date, though it is most likely twelfth century. A pair of 
very good perpendicular belfry windows have been added 
on each face of the upper stage, and, with the battlements, 
make a very pleasing tower. 

" There are some interesting minor details in the church. 
On the wall of the tower in the interior is a slab of stone 
with the words, ' Extructum Fuit, 1594 '; and on two shields 
below are the initials, * W. H. & R. S., " which are supposed 
to be those of William Holbech and Ralph Smith, church- 
wardens at that time. 



EDSONS IN EN(;LAXn AXD AMI-RTCA 65 

The ancient font is described as "a plain cylindrical 
bowl, of Norman date. It was removed from the church 
about fifty-six years ago, and taken to a garden in the par- 
ish, where for some time it was used as a flower stand. 
Some years ago it was restored to the church, l)ut stood for 
some time unused. At the recent restoration it was once 
more placed in its proper position." It has a lead lining. 




OLD FONT IN FILLONQLEY CHURCH 



"The tower contains a peal of five good bells; the date 
of the oldest now there is 1628, though, of course, the church 
before that time possessed a ])eal. The inscription on the 
oldest bell is, '7. H. S. Nazareuus Rex JttdcBorum Fill Dei 
Miserere met 1628.' On anollier, in order of time, 'Soli 
Deo gloria. Pax hominibus, 16^4. Edivard Holbach, 
Thomas Brearle.' On a third, ])earing the date of 1658, 
' Bryan us JUdridge fecit }ue.' ( )n a fourlli. of lygi. 'John 
Fletcher, vicar; Thomas Lovett, and William Lakiii, church- 
wardens; Edivard Arnold, Leicester, fecit.' Tlie bell known 
as the tliird has this inscription on it. ' 7". Lovett, and jf. 



66 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

White, churchwardens; Edward Arnold, Leicester, fecit, 

1795- " 

There are several mural tablets in the chancel and a 

number of memorial stones in the floor of it bearing in- 
cri])tions to the memory of highly esteemed parishioners 
and officers of the church, as also are others on the wall of 
the chapel and in the floor of the nave, whose remains are 
entombed there. Quaint and interesting epitaphs are on 
the monuments and headstones on the numerous graves in 
the churchyard. The effacing and destructive hand of 
time has left there none of the memorial stones once mark- 
ing the graves of members of the ancient Edson families of 
the parish. A venerable yew-tree, with wide-spreading, 
twisted branches, growing near the church door, is an 
attractive and unique feature of the place. 

The registers of the parish contain entries from the year 
1538, the first record-book having them to the year 1653. 
The next contains entries of baptisms and burials from Octo- 
ber, 1653, to 1678, and those of marriages from 1654 to 
1 7 15. The third book, which comprises the fragmentary 
entries of two earlier books has records of baptisms and 
burials from 1678, and of marriages from 1679 to 1750. 
Another, those of marriages from 1754 to 1789; and an- 
other, those of baptisms and burials from 1759; and another, 
those of baptisms and burials from 1790 to 1812; and 
another, those of marriages from i8i3to 1837; and another, 
those of baptisms and burials from 1809 to 181 2. 

In 1546, the people of the parish were afflicted by a 
plague, when there were no less than sixty- three burials 
recorded of its victims in the space of a year. These are 
entered under the heading, ''In tempore plage.'' In 1666, 
there was another affliction of many deaths in the parish, 
the church register having entries of twenty-nine burials. 

The two volumes of churchwardens' accounts, begin- 
ning with the year 1581, contain mention of events of con- 
siderable importance to writers of histories of families living 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



67 



at earh^ times in the parish. "As has been well said, 'the 
histor}' of even a remote village is but the history of the 
nation in little.'" In these accounts, besides the money 
expended, can be learned "how national victories were 
announced by the ringing of the church bells, and how 
national sorrows and disasters by the proclamation of a 
form of prayer or of a fast." The King's birthday, and the 
"holyday," and "the fifth of November," were (kily cele- 
brated yearly b}^ the ringing of the bells. They were rung 
"the day that Monmouth was taken," 1685; for "the vic- 
tory in Ireland and the King's return," in 1690; at the 



'^^^ir,. 




SOUTHWARD VIEW OF THE STREET ON WEST SIDE OF FILLONGLEY CHURCH 

time of the " Thanksgi\'ing, held fnr tlK> rcMhiclion of Ire- 
land," in 1692; "for tlie victory of Cattalona," in 1707; 
and "for the victor\' in vS])ain,"' in 1710. 

The parish constables' accounts likewise contain inter- 
esting entries, such as relate to the "Towne ArnK^-" and 
"Artillerie," "the Press Money," "the Butts," "the whip- 
ping of vagrants," and "the repairing of the Stocks." 



68 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

In the "List of the Vicars of the church of Saint Mary 
and All Saints, Fillongley, a.d. i 248-1888," are entered: 

"John Taylor: In the list of the Brethren of the Gild of 
St. Anne, of Knowle, his name occurs in the roll for the 
year 1483 — ' Domine Jofics Tailour, Vicar: de Fynyngley.' 
[Patrons]: the Prior and Canons of Maxstoke." 

"Richard Deppyng. 20th May, 1487. 

" He also joined the Gild of St. Anne. His name occurs 
in the list for the year 15 13 — ■' Dominns Ricard Deppyng, 
Vicar: de Fynnygley.' 

"Thomas Palmer, 1 6th April, 1529. Dominus. 

"John Nicholson, 5th April, 1531. 

"Thurstanus Morrey, 31st December, 1556. George 
Coldwell, gent, [patron]." 

"Thomas Graunger, 2nd March, 1581. Sir Nicholas 
Strange [patron]." 

[Thomas Gilbert, 14th March, 1586.] 

" Christopher Forde, 24th September, 1608. The Crown 
[patron]." 

" Josiah Packwood, 1641. The Crown [patron]." 

"Charles Chetwode Hamilton, 28th August, 1884. The 
Crown [patron]." 

"Arthur Bicknell Stevenson, 8th May, 1888. The 
Crown [patron]." 



Chapter III 
Samuel Edsoii of Old and New England 

1613-1692 

A S a worthy son of a worthy sire, Samuel Edson, having 
■^"^ passed his yotith upon the farm of his father at Fil- 
longley, and having obtained, as was the custom, the 
education fitting him for the sphere of hfe into which 
he was born, he took part in such daily work as grad- 
ually advanced him in the knowledge of the art of hus- 
bandry. He there acquired great skill in farming, which 
his subsequent prosperity and distinction fully evidenced. 
While still in his minority, a number of young men of the 
parish, as well as older with families, emigrated to New 
England to better their fortunes. Considerable informa- 
tion was conveyed to him regarding the different settle- 
ments in which they were living by the letters written by 
them to their kinsfolk and friends in Warwickshire. Some, 
being Independents or Separatists, had settled in the Colony 
of New Plymouth; others, being Puritans or adliercnts of 
the Church of England, had seated themselves in tlie Colony 
of Massachusetts Bay. 

The Earl of Warwick, having become interested in aid- 
ing the New England Company organized for the ])lanting 
of settlers within the bounds of Massachusetts Bay. llu- 
people of the rural districts of Warwickshiiv began taking 
into consideration, more than they had pre\i( »usly, the 
means of participating in reaping the advantages that were 
extended to them by the energetic founders of the com})an\'. 

69 



70 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

In 1628, a body of English yeomen, single and married, 
had been settled at Naumkeag, in Massachusetts Bay, under 
John Endicott, the most honest and prudent of whom were 
Roger Conant, John Woodbury, John Balch, and Peter 
Palfrey. 

In the spring of 1629, a still larger emigration to the 
Colony of Massachusetts Bay eventuated. A number of 
vessels were chartered and provisioned to transport the 
great company of English farmers that had engaged them- 
selves in different parts of the kingdom to go there. Among 
those who were to occupy positions of dignity and influence 
was the Rev. Francis Higginson of Leicestershire, " a gradu- 
ate of Emanuel College, and a man mighty in the Scriptures 
and learned in the tongues," and his two associates in the 
ministry, the Rev. Samuel Skelton, " of gracious speech and 
full of faith," and the Rev. Francis Bright. The Rev. 
Ralph Smith, presumably a son of Ralph Smith, who was, 
in 1594, a warden of Fillongley Church, had likewise been 
granted passage in one of the ships, but as he was discovered 
to be a Separatist, "order was given that, unless he would 
be ' conformable to the government of the colony, ' he 
should not exercise his ministry within its jurisdiction." 

The Rev. Francis Higginson, who had agreed to serve 
the New England Company as a clergyman on the planta- 
tion, made the incidents of his passage to America the sub- 
ject matter of A true Relation of the last Voyage to New- 
England, written on the twenty-fourth of July, 1629. He was 
also the author of a little work, Neiv Englands Plantation. 
Or a Short and Trve Description of the Commodities and Dis- 
commodities of that Country, printed in London, in 1630.' 
This last-named pamphlet widely advertised the advan- 
tages accruing to persons settling in the plantation of Massa- 

' A true Relation of the lajt Voyage to iWciv England, declaring all circum- 
ftances, ivith the manner of the paffage we had by fea, and what manner of country 
and inhabitants we found when we came to land; and what is the prefent ftate and 
condition of the English people that are there already. 

Faithfully recorded to the very truth, for the faliffaction of very many of 



EDSONS IN ENXtLAND AND AMERICA 71 

chusetts Bay, and incited many discontented and ambitious 
English people, in England and the Netherlands, to go there 
as soon as it was practical )k' for them. 

Of the arriw'il of the Talbot ofi the coast of Massachu- 
setts Ba)', on June 26, 1629, the Rev. Francis Higginson 
writes : 

" We faw many fchools of mackrill, infinite multitudes 
on every fide of our fhip. The fea was al;)undantly ftored 
with rock weed and yellow flowers, like gilly flowers. By 
noon we were within 3 leagues of Cajjan [Cape Ann], and as 
we fayled along the coafts, we faw every hill and dale and 
every ifland full of gay woods and high trees. The nearer 
we came to the fhoare, the more flowers in abundance, fome- 
tymes fcattered abroad, fometymes joyned in fheets 9 or 
10 yards long, which we fuppofed to be brought from the 
low meadowes by the tyde. Now what with fine woods and 
greene trees by land, and thefe yellow flowers paynting the 
fea, made us all defirous to fee our new paradise of New- 
England, whence we faw fuch forerunning fignals of fer- 
tilitie afarre ofT." 

As they passed into "the large fpacious harbour of 
Naimkecke" (Naumkeag), on Monday, June 29, the de- 
lighted minister declares, "it was wonderful to behould fo 
many iflands rei)lcnifhe(l with thicke wood and liigh trees 
and many fayre greene paftures." 

Speaking of the length of the voyage, he says: "Our 
pafl'age was fhort and fpeedy, for whereas we had 1000 



my loving fn'oids, il>!io Iiave earnejtly requejied to be truly certifyed in thcjc 
things. 

Writlcii jriini A'ew-Engla)id, July 24, i63g. 

If iiiiy curious criticke that lookes for exactnes of phrafcs, or expert jeaiiian tluit 
regards propriety of fea-terms, may be diffappointed. 

Niiw-Exci.AXDS Plantation. Or a Sliurl tnut 'I'rve Description of the Com- 
modities iDhl / h'sc'iiiiiiodities of that ( 'oioitry. WriltiMi l)v Mr. Ifiggeson, a reuer- 
cnd DiuiiK' now tluTe resident. Wliereunto is added a Leltrr, .srnl li\- Mr. 
Graiics, an lini^inere, out of Xeiv-I:^ngla)id. The third h'.iiition. enlarged. Lon- 
don. Printed hy T. and K. Cotes for Michael Sparke, dwelling at the Signe of 
the Blew Bible in Greene Arbor. 1630. 



72 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

leagues, that is, 3000 miles English, to fayle from Ould to 
New England, we performed the same in 6 weeks and 3 
days." He f mother remarks: "We had a pious and chris- 
tian-like paffage; for I fuppose paffengers fhall feldom 
find a company of more religious honest and kynd seamen 
than we had. We conftantly ferved God morning and 
evening by reading and expounding a chapter, singing and 
prayer. And the Sabbath was folemlny kept by adding to 
the former, preaching twife and catechifing. And in our 
great need we kept 2 folemne fafts, and found a gracious 
effect. Let all that love and ufe fafting and praying take 
notife that it is as prevaileuble by fea as by land, wherefo- 
ever it is faithfully performed. Befides, the fhip mafter 
and his company ufed every night to fett their 8 and 12 a 
clocke watches with finging a j^falme and [making a] prayer 
that was not read out of a booke." ' 

Of the land in and about Naumkeag, he says: It "is 
neither too flat . . . nor too high," and is naturally 
"fit for pasture, or for plow or meddow ground, as men 
please to employ it : though all the countrey bee as it were 
a thicke wood, . . . yet in divers places there is much 
ground cleared by the Indians, and espicially about the 
plantation: And I am told that about three miles from us 
a man may stand on a little hilly place and see divers thou- 
sands of acres of ground as good as need to be, and not a 
tree in the same. It is thought here is good clay to make 
bricke and tyles and earthen pots as need be. At this in- 
stant we are setting a brick-kill [brick-yard ?] on worke to 
make brickes and tyles for the building of our houses. For 
stone, here are plentie of slates at the Isle of Slate in Masa- 
thulets bay, and lime-stone, free-stone, and smooth-stone, 
and iron-stone, and marble-stone. 

" The fertilitie of the soyle is to be admired at, as appear- 
eth in the aboundance of grasse that groweth everie where, 

' The Publications of the Prince Society. The Hntchinso)i Papers. Albany, 
1865. Vol. i., pp. 47, 48, 49, 50. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 73 

both verie thicke, verie long, and verie high in divers places. 
But it groweth verie wildly with a great stalke and a broad 
and ranker blade, because it never had been eaten by cattle, 
nor mowed with a sythe, and seldome tramj^led on by foot. 
It is scarce to bee beleeved how our kine and goates, horses 
and hogges, doe thrive and prosper here. 

" The aboundant encrease of corne proves this countrey 
to bee a wonderment. . . . It is almost incredible what 
great gaine some of our English planters have had l^y our 
Indian corne. Credible persons have assured me, and the 
partie himself e avouched the truth of it to me, that of the 
setting of 13 gallons of corne hee hath encrease of it 52 
hogsheads, every hogshead holding seven bushels of London 
measure, and every bushell was by him sold and trusted to 
the Indians for so much beaver as was worth 18 shillings; 
and so of this 13 gallons of corne, which was worth 6 shil- 
lings 8 pence, he made 327 pounds of it the yeere following. 
. There is not such greate and plentifull eares of 
corne I suppose any where else to bee found but in this 
country: Being also of [a] varietie of colours, as red, blew, 
and yellow, &-c., and of one [ear of] corne there springeth 
four or five hundred. 

" This country al')oundeth naturally with stores of roots 
of great varietie and good to eat. Oiu" turnips, parsnips, 
and carrots are here both bigger and sweeter than is ordinary 
to be found in England. Here are stores of pumpions 
[pum])kins], cowcombers, and other things of that nature 
which I know not. Also divers excellent pot-herbs grow 
abundantly among the grasse, as strawberrie Icaxcs in all 
places of the countrey, and plentie of stra\vl)crrics in their 
time, and |)enn\T()\al. wiiiter-saverie, sorrcll. ])rookelime, 
liverwort, carvell, and watercresses, also leekes and onions 
are ordinarie, and dix'crs ])1iysic'al hcrl)s. Wove are also 
aboundance of other swc^cl herbs dclis^'hltnl to llu> snu'll. 
whose names 1 know not, and jilcnlie of singk' daniaske 
roses verie sweete; and two kinds ol iKTbcs llial bare two 



74 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

kinds of flowers very sweet, which, they say, are as good to 
make cordage or cloath as any hempe or flaxe we have. 

" Excellent vines are here up and downe in the woods." 

"Also, mulberries, plums, raspberries, corrance, ches- 
riuts, filberds, walnuts, smalnuts, hurtleberies, and hawes of 
whitethorne neere as good as our cherries in England, they 
grow in plentie here. 

" For wood there is no better in the world I thinke, here 
being foure sorts of oke differing both in the leafe, tim- 
ber, and colour, all excellent good. There is also good ash, 
elme, willow, birch, beech, saxafras, juniper, cipres, cedar, 
spruce, pines, and firrs that will yeeld abundance of turpen- 
tine, pitch, tarre, masts, and other materials for building both 
ships and houses. Also here are stores of sumacke trees, 
they are good for dyeing and tanning of leather, likewise 
such trees [as] yeeld a precious gum called white benjamin 
[benzoin], that they say is excellent for perfumes. Also 
here be divers roots and berries wherewith the Indians dye 
excellent holding colours that no raine nor washing can 
alter. Also, wee have materials to make sope-ashes and 
salt-peter in aboundance. 

" For beasts there are some beares, and they say some 
lyons also; for they have been seen at Cape Anne. Also 
here are several sorts of deere, some whereof bring [into the 
world] three or foure young ones at once, which is not ordi- 
narie in England. Also wolves, foxes, beavers, otters, 
martins, great wild cats, and a great beast called a molke 
[moose], as big as an ox. . . . Also here are great 
stores of squerrels, some greater and some smaller. 

" The aboundance of sea-fish is almost beyond beleeving, 
and sure I should scarce have beleeved it, except I had 
scene it with mine owne eyes. I saw great store of whales, 
and grampuses, and such aboundance of mackerils that it 
would astonish one to behold, likewise cod-fish in abound- 
ance on the coast, and in their season are plentifully taken. 
There is a fish called a basse, a most sweet and wholesome 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 75 

fish as ever I did eate. . . . And besides basse we take 
plentie of scate and thornbacks, and abundance of lobsters. 
. . . I have seene some myselfe that have weighed 16 
pound, but others have had at divers times so great lob- 
sters as have weighed 25 pound, as they assure mee. Also 
here is abundance of herring, turbot, sturgeon, cuskes, 
hadocks, mullets, eeles, crabbes, muskles, and oysters. 

" Besides there is probability that the countrey is of an 
excellent temper for the making of salt : For since our com- 
ing, our fishermen have brought home very good salt which 
they found candied by the standing of the sea water and 
the heat of the stmne, upon a rocke by the sea shore: and 
in divers salt marshes that some have gone through, they 
have found some salt in some places crushing under their 
feete and cleaving to their shooes. 

" And as for fresh water, the countrey is full of dainty 

springs, and some great rivers, and some lesser brookes. 

And neere Salem they have as fine cleare water as 

we can desire, and we may digge wells and find water where 

we list. 

" The temper of the aire of New-England is one speciall 
thing that commends this place. Experience doth mani- 
fest that there is hardly a more healthfull j^lace to be found 
in the world that agreeth better with our English bodyes. 
Many that have beene weake and sickly in old England, by 
coming hither have beene thoroughly healed and growne 
healthfull and strong. 

" I, that have not gone without a cap for many yeeres 
together, neither diu'st leave off the same, have now cast 
away my cap, and doe weare none at all in the day time. 
And whereas beforetime I cloathed in\sclfe with double 
cloaths and thicke waistcoates to keepe me warinc, even in 
the summer time, I doe now goe as tliin (.-lad as an\', onely 
wearing a light stutfe cassocke u])on my shirt, and stuffe 
breeches of one thicknesse without linings. 

" In the summer time, in the midst of July and August, 



76 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

it is a good deale hotter than in Old England. And in win- 
ter, January and February are much colder, they say. But 
the spring and autumne are of a middle temper. 

" Fowles of the aire are plentifuU here, and of all sorts 
as we have in England, as farre as I can learn, and a great 
many of strange fowles which we know not. . . . Here 
are likewise aboundance of turkies, often killed in the 
woods, farre greater than our English turkies, and exceding 
fat, sweet, and fleshy, for here they have aboundance of 
feeding all the yeere long, as strawberries, in summer all 
places are full of them, and all manner of berries and fruits. 
In the winter time I have scene flockes of pidgeons, and 
have eaten of them. They doe fly from tree to tree as other 
birds doe, which our pidgeons will not doe in England. 
They are of all colours as ours are, but their wings and 
tayles are far longer, and therefore it is likely they fly 
swifter to escape the terrible hawkes in this country. In 
winter time this country doth abound with wild geese, wild 
ducks, and other seafowle, that a great part of the winter 
the planters have eaten nothing but roast meate of divers 
fowles which they have killed. ... 

"Though it bee here somewhat cold in the winter, yet 
here we have plenty of fire to warme us, and that a great 
deale cheaper than they sell billets and faggots in London. 
Nay, all Europe is not able to afford to make so great fires 
as New- England. A poore servant here that is to possess 
but 50 acres of land, may afford to give more wood for tim- 
ber and fire, as good as the world yeelds, than many [a] 
nobleman in England can afford to do. Here is good living 
for those that love good fires. 

"And although New-England has no tallow to make 
candles of, yet by the aboundance of the fish thereof, it can 
afford oil for lampes. Yea, our pine trees, that are the 
most plentifull of all wood, doth allow us plenty of candles 
which are very usefuU in a house. And they are such 
candles as the Indians commonly use, having no other, and 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



/ / 



they are nothing else but the wood of the pine tree cloven 
in two little slices, something thin, which are so full of the 
moysture of turpentine and ])itch that they burne as cleere 
as a torch." 

Among the discommodities of New England mentioned 
by him, "musketoes" are the first, being the same "little 
flyes" with which they were troubled in Lincolnshire, and 
"which, except they bee smoked out of the houses, are 
troublesome in the night season." 

The extreme coldness of the winters was another source 
of discomfort to the settlers. 

The frequency of rattlesnakes in the fields and woods 
was also considered a circumstance of danger attending 
their going about the j^lantation. 

The greatest drawback of all appears to have been the 
want of a large immigration of settlers "to l)ring with 
them horses, kine, and sheepe, to make use of that fruitfuU 
land. " It is a great pity, he remarks, " to see so much good 
ground for corne and for grasse as any under the heavens, 
to Iv altogether unoccupied, when so many honest nien and 
their families in Old England, through the populousnesse 
thereof, do make very hard shift to live one by the other." 

His brief description of the savages of New England and 
their manner of living contains the following particulars: 

"For their governors thev have kings, which l1ic\' call 
Saggamores, some greater and some lesser, according to the 
number of their subjects. The greater Saggamores about 
us cannot make above three hundred men, and other lesse 
Saggamores have not above fifteen subjects, and others 
neere about us but two. Tlicir subjects above twch'c years 
since were swept away by a great and grievous ])lague that 
was amongst them, so that there arc \'crie few left to in- 
habite the country. 

"The Indians are not able to make use of tlie one fourth 
])art of the land, neither have they an\- settled ])laces as 
townes to dwell in, nor an_\' ground as tliey challenge for 



78 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

their possession, but change their habitation from place to 
place, 

" For their statures, they are a tall and strong limmed 
people; their colours are tawney; they goe naked, save 
onely they are in part covered with beasts skins on one of 
their shoulders, and weare something before their loins. 
Their haire is generally blacke, and cut before, like our 
gentelewomen, and one locke longer than the rest, much 
like to our gentelmen, which fashion I thinke came from 
hence into England. 

" For their weapons, they have bowes and arrowes, some 
of them headed with bone, and some with brasse. 

" The men for the most part live idely ; they do nothing 
Init hunt and fish. Their wives set their corne and doe all 
their other worke. They have little household stuffe, as a 
kettle, and some other vessels like trayes, spoones, dishes, 
and baskets. 

" Their houses are verie little and homely, being made 
with small poles pricked into the ground, and so bended and 
fastned at the tops, and on the sides they are matted with 
boughs, and covered on the roof with sedge and old mats; 
and for their beds that they take their rest on, they have a 
mat. 

"They doe generally prof esse to like well of our coming 
and planting here, partly because there is abundance of 
ground that they cannot possesse nor make use of, and 
partly because our being here will bee a means both of 
relief to them when they want, and also a defence from 
their enemies, wherewith (I say) before this plantation 
began, they were often indangered. 

" For their religion they do worship two Gods, a good 
God and an evil God. The good God they call Tantum, and 
their evil God, whom they fear will doe them hurt, they 
call S quantum. 

" For their dealing with us, we neither fear nor trust 
them, for fourtie of our musketeeres will drive five hundred 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 79 

of them out of the field. We use them kindly. They will 
come into our houses sometimes by half a dozen or half a 
score at a time when we are at victtials, but will ask or take 
nothing l^ut what we give them." ' 

Settling at Naumkeag, then recently named Salem 
(place of consolation), the Rev. Francis Higginson's de- 
scription of the place in 1629, about the time of the first 
seating of colonists there, makes it historically highly 
valuable. 

" When we came firft to Naimkeck, we found about half 
a fcore houfes built: and a fayre houfe newly built for the 
governour, and we found also abundance of corne planted 
by them excellent good and well liking. We brought with 
us about 200 paffengers and ])lanters more which by com- 
mon confent of the ould ])lanters are all now combyned 
together into one body politique under the same governour. 

"There are with us in all, ould and new planters, 300, 
whereof 200 of them are settled at Naimkecke, now called 
Salem, and the reft have planted themfelves at Mafathulets 
bay, beginning to build a towne there which wee do call 
Charlefton or Charlef towne. 

" We that are fettled at Salem make what hafte we can 
to build houfes, fo that within a fhort t>-mc we fhall have 
a fayre towne." ^ 

By the charter, granted on the fourth of March, 1629, bv 
King Charles the First, " The Governor and Com]3any of the 
Massachusetts Bay in New-England," Ca])tain John Endi- 
cott, and the twelve men chosen as his councillors, then resi- 
dent upon the plantation at Naumkeag, were, at a General 
Court, held in London on the thirtieth of A])ril that vear, 
denominated " The Governor and Council of London's plan- 
tation in tlie Massachusetts Bay in New-England." 

• Collections oj the Massachusetts Historical Society, for the Year iyg2. Bos- 
ton, 1806. Vol. i., ])]). 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 12.^. 

• The I'lihlications oj the Prince Society. The Hutchinson Tapers. Albany, 
18O5. Vol. i., pp. 51, 52. — Collections of the .Massachusetts Jlistorical Society, for 
the Year i'/g2. Boston, 1806. Vol. i., pp. 123, 124. 



8o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

At another General Court of the Governor and Company, 
held in London on the twenty-ninth of August that year, it 
was determined that the charter and government of the 
plantation should be transferred to New England. 

At another General Court, held in London on the twenti- 
eth of October, " the government being transferred into New 
England," the election of a new governor, deputy-governor, 
and assistants was effected. Mr. John Winthrop, being by 
"his integrity and sufficiency well fitted and accomplished 
for the place of governor," was by an "erection of hands" 
chosen to discharge the duties of that office " for the ensuing 
year," beginning that day, and who "thereupon took the 
oath to that place appertaining." "And in like manner, 
and with like free and full consent, Mr. John Humphrey was 
chosen deputy-governor. ' ' 

Eleven vessels were provided for the transportation to 
Massachusetts Bay of the large efffux of settlers that were 
to go out to the plantation with the newly chosen officers. 
" The whole fleet was ' filled with passengers of all occupa- 
tions, skilled in all kinds of faculties, needful for the plant- 
ing of a new colony, ' who set forth ' some from the west of 
England, but the greatest number came from abotit Lon- 
don, though Southampton was the rendezvous where they 
took ship.' " 

Seldom is there to be found a memorial couched in such 
terms of tender and sincere affection and remembrance as 
the following, in "The Humble Request" of these depart- 
ing officials and their associates, " to the rest of their breth- 
ren in and of the Church of England." 

" We beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of the Lord 
Jesus, to consider us as your brethren, standing in very 
great need of your help, and earnestly imploring it. And 
howsoever your charity may have met with some occasion 
of discouragement through the misreport of our intentions, 
or through the disaffection or indiscretion of some of us, or 
rather, amongst us, for we are not of those that dream of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 8i 

perfection in this world; yet we desire yon would be pleased 
to take notice of the principals and 1)ody of our Company, 
as those who esteem it our lionoiir to call the church of 
England, from whence we rise, otir dear mother: and can- 
not ])art from our native country, where she specially re- 
sideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in 
our e\'es. ever acknowledging that sut"h hope and part as 
we have obtained in the common salvation, we have re- 
ceived in her bosom, and sucked it from her l)reasts. We 
leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we 
were nourished there; but, blessing God for the parentage 
and education, as members of the same body shall always 
rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow 
that shall ever betide her, and while we have breath sin- 
cerely desire and endeavour the continuance and abundance 
of her welfare, with the enlargement of her bounds in the 
kingdom of Christ Jesus." 

On April 8, 1630, the Arbdla set sail for New Engkmd, 
and "after a cold and tempestuous voyage of sixty-one 
days, came in sight of Cape Anne," on the eleventh day of 
June. On the following day the vessel cast anchor in the 
harbor of Naumkeag. Captain John Endicott, the Rev. 
Samuel Skelton, and several other representative men of 
Salem went aboard to welcome Governor Winthrop and 
other of their friends and acquaintances. Speaking of the 
kind greetings tendered them, Governor Winthrop says: 
" We that were of the Assistants and some other gentlemen, 
and some of the women, and our ca])tain, returned with 
them to Nahumkeck, where we supped with a good \'enison 
pasty and good beer, and at night we returned to our ship, 
but some of the women stayed behind." He further ob- 
serves: "In the mean time, most of our ])eo])le went on 
shore upon the land of Cape Ann, which lay very near us, 
and gathered [a] store of fine strawberries." 

" Salem was already well sui)i)Hed witli inhabitants; and, 
as it '(hd not suit for the capital town," tlu' extension of 

6 



82 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the area of the settlement towards wthe Bay was advised. 
Hence, three days after the arrival of Governor Winthrop, 
he, with others, sailed 'up the Mistick' where he found 'a 
good |jlace,' " and spent a night. " He returned at the end 
of two days by the way of Nastasket." "A second party 
followed the first, ' to approve or dislike their judgment, ' and 
found a place which suited them better, ' three leagues up 
Charles river,' " " The removal from Salem being resolved 
upon, in July most of the emigrants landed at Charlestown ; 
the governor and the principal men dwelt in the ' Great 
House,' and the multitude set up cottages, and tents about 
the Town Hill." 

Among the incidents forming the history of Salem was 
the death, by a fever, of the Rev. Francis Higginson, late 
in midsummer. He had been ordained there on August 6, 
1629, and, it is said, he preached his last sermon at Salem 
to a congregation of which Governor Winthrop and other 
officials of the colony were a part; his text being: "What 
went ye out into the wilderness to see ? " ' 

In 1634, the following description of Salem appeared in 
New-Englands Prospect,^ printed in London that year, of 
which William Wood was the author, he having made a 
voyage, in 1629, to New England. 

^ Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New- 
England. Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. 
By Alexander Young. Boston, 1846. Pp. 66, 67; 87; 88, 102, 104, io=^, 106, 
107; 125, 126. 

The Hvmble Reqvest of His IMajcstie's loyall Subjects, the Governour and 
the Company late gone for New-England; To the rest of their Brethren, in and of 
the Church of England. For the obtaining of their Prayers, and the removall of 
suspitions, and misconstructions of their Intentions. London. Printed for John 
Bellamie. 1630. Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachu- 
setts Bay, pp. 294-298. — Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2d 
Series. Cambridge, 1815. Vol. v., 156, 157. — The History of Massachusetts. 
The Colonial Period. By John Stetson Barry. Boston, 1855. Pp. 187, 188, 
189, 192. 

^ Nevv-Englands Prospect. A true, lively, and experimentall defcrip- 
tion of that part of America, commonly called New England: difcovering the 
ftate of that Countrie, both as it ftands to our new-come Englifh Planters; and 
to the old Native Inhabitants. Laying downe that which may both enrich the 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 83 

" Salem," as he writes, " ftands on the middle of a necke 
of land very pleafantly, having a South river on the one 
fide, and a North river on the other fide : upon this necke 
where moft of the houfes stand is very bad and fandie 
ground, yet for feven yeares together it hath brought forth 
exceeding good corne, by being fished but every third 
yeare; in some places is very good ground, and very good 
timber, and divers fprings hard by the fea fide. Here like- 
wife is ftore of fish, as Bafi"es, Eels, Lobsters, Clammes, &c. 

"Although their land be none of the beft, yet beyond 
thofe rivers is a very good foyl, where they have taken 
farms, and get their Hay, and plant their corne; there they 
crofie thefe rivers with fmall Cannowes, which are made of 
whole pine trees, being about two foot and a half over, and 
20 foot long: in thefe likewife they goe a fowling, fome- 
times two leagues to fea; there be more Cannowes in this 
towne than in the whole Patent : every houfehold having a 
water-houfe or two. This Towne wants an Ale wife river, 
which is a great inconvenience. 

"It hath two good harbours, the one being called Win- 
ter, and the other Summer harbour, which lyeth within 
Derbies Fort, which place, if it were well fortified, might 
keepe fhippes from landing of forces in any of thofe two 
places." ' 

The assignment of land to the settlers in and near Salem 
was not restricted to a uniform area, although lots of ten 
acres were commonly allotted to man_\'. Those ha\-ing 
grants of land of greater extent were re([uired to cultivate 
or make use of them, as is disclosed b}' the following court- 
order of April I, 1634: 



knowledge of the niind-tra\'elling Reader, or heiielit llu' future Voyager. By 
William Wood. Printed at London, by Tho. Cotes, for John Bellamie, and are 
to be fold at his fhop, at the tlirce Golden Lyons in Cornc-hill, neere the Royall 
Exchange. 1634. 

' 77?^ Publications of the Prince Society, Boston, 1865. — Wood's New-Eng- 
land's Prospect, p. 48. — Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massa- 
hcusetts Bay, by Alexander Young ; Boston, 1S46, Pp. 390, 409, 410. 



84 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" It is ordered, that if any man that hath a greate quan- 
titie of land graunted him and doeth not build upon it or 
improve it within three yeares, it shal be free for the Court 
to dispose of it to whome they please." Again, on January 
9, 1635, a resolution was adopted by the authorities, "that 
the least family shall haue 10 acres, but great familyes may 
haue more." 

Another order was made on August 2 2d, that year, requir- 
ing the land-holders to have surveys made of their respec- 
tive allotments and have the same visibly defined under a 
penalty of ten shillings: 

"It is ordered that all the inhabitants of this towne of 
Salem y^ [that] haue fearmes greater or lesse, or any quan- 
titye of land granted to them, or any ten acre lott, medoes, 
or marshes, be they more or lesse in quantity, shall repaire 
to the men appoynted to lay out bounds, and by the last of 
y*" [the] 3. mo: [month] to haue all y"" [your] ten acre lotts 
bounded. And all others that haue fearmes, or meadoes, 
or marshes: by y*" first of y'' 9. mo: next ensueing; and all 
y*" lands being bounded, to make such marks or bounds, 
either by staues or deepe holes. And that eurie mans 
bounds may be recorded upon y" penaltie of X5., provided 
that those deputed to lay out bounds be paid for y'' [their] 
paynes." 

On November i6th, that year, five overseers and survey- 
ors of land were appointed for the precinct of Salem, who for 
their "paynes" in laying out land were to receive four 
pence "the acre for small lotts," and ten shillings "the 
hundred for great lotts." ' 

The dwellings erected by the first settlers were built of 
logs ; the better ones being of dressed timber or logs chipped 
flat by a dexterous use of the adze. The spaces between 
the logs were filled with the chips of the trimmed timber or 



I Town Records of Salem, October i , 1634, to November 7, 16 ^g. Salem, 1868, 
Pp. 8, 10.— Annals of Salem, by Joseph B. Felt. Salem, 1845. Vol. i., pp. 181, 
183. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 85 

with small stones or |)ieces of brick, jjkistered inside and 
outside with mortar. The roofs, high and steep for rapid 
shedding of rain or sliding of snow, were either thatched 
with straw, reeds, or boughs of trees, or covered with tiles. 
The fire-places, constructed of stone or brick set in mortar, 
were made wide and deep, in order to admit the burning in 
them of thick and long pieces of wood, and to afford room 
for the convenient adjustment of chains, trammels, cranes, 
and other iron appendages on which to suspend kettles, 
pots, and such like culinary utensils of iron over the burning 
fuel. The chimneys, rising from the fire-places at the 
gable -ends of the rudely fashioned houses, were commonly 
built with pieces of splitted wood, placed one above the 
other at right angles, and thickly plastered on the inner 
side with clay to keep the chimney from catching fire; from 
which manner of plastering them, they obtained the name 
of catted chimneys. 

Light was admitted into these log or frame houses 
through small windows of oiled paper, and into those of 
better construction, through small panes of lozenge-shaped 
glass set in lead frames. The windows thus latticed with 
lead " were from two and a half to three feet in length, and 
one and a half to two in width. Sometimes they were made 
in halves. They opened either outwardly, or inwardly, on 
hinges." ' 

The doors were mostly made at first with ])ieces of 
splitted wood, afterward of sawed timber. Kuch settler 
was then his own carpenter and mason, and with the few 
tools and im])lements in his possession accomplished the 
erection and completion of his dwelling, barn, and out- 
buildings. 

The Rev. Francis liigginson's experience as a pit)neer- 
settler was such, that in a letter addressed to his friends in 
England who had in contemplation the sett hnj^ ( >f tht-mselves 

" ^Annals of Salcni. \>y Joseph B. Felt. SaKin, 1S45. \'ul i . p|). 401, 402, 
403. 



86 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, he gave them the fol- 
lowing timely advice: " No man hath or can have a houfe 
built for him here unleffe he comes himfelfe, or elfe fends 
fervants before to do it for him. . . . They [that come] 
fhall indeed have fo much land allotted to them," "but if 
they will have houfes, they muft build them. . . . 

"All that come muft have victualls with them for a 
twelve-month. I meane they muft have meale, oatmeale, 
and fuch like fuftenauns of food, till they can gett increefe 
of corne by their owne labour. 

" Before you come, be carefull to be ftrongly inftructed 
what things are fitteft to bring with you. . . . For 
when you are once parted with England you fhall meete 
neither with taverns, nor alehoufes, nor butchers, nor 
grofers, nor apothecaries fhops ; . . . here are yet 
neither markets nor fayres to buy what you want. There- 
fore be fure to furnifh yourfelves with things fitting to be 
had, before you come; as meale for bread, malt for drinke, 
woolen and linnen cloath, and leather for fhoes, and all 
manner of carpenters tools, and a good deale of iron and 
fteele to make nails, and lockes for houfes, and furniture 
for ploughs and carts, and glaffe for windowes, and many 
other things, which were better for you to think of them 
there than to want them here."' 

The first building used for a meeting-house from 1629 to 
1638, having, as it seems, become unsuited to the needs of 
the congregation, the following agreement was made on 
February 4, 1638, with John Pickering, to erect a new 
house of worship : 

"ffirst hee is to build a mee tinge howse of 25 foote long, 
the breadth of the old buildinge, w*'" a gallerie answerable 
to the former: One Catted Chimney of 12 foote long and 4 
foote in height aboue the top of the buildinge. The back 

^ "Some brief collections out of a letter that Mr. Higginfon fent to his 
freends at Leicefter." The Publications of the Prince Society. Albany, 1865. 
The Hutchinson Papers, vol. i., pp. 52, 53, 54. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 87 

whereof is to be of l)rick or stone. The buiklingc is to haue 
six sufficient windowes, 2 on each side & 2 at the end, & a 
paire of staires to ascend the galleries suteable to the 
former. 

" This buildinge is to be couered w'" inch & halfe planck, 
& inch board vpon that, to meete close: And all this to be 
sufficientlie finished w^'' daubinge, & glasse, & vnderpin- 
ninge w^^' stone or l)rick, w*'' cariadge, and all things neces- 
sar\', l)y the said John Pickeringe: 

" In consideration whereof the said John Pickeringe is 
to haue 63/. in money, to be paid at 3 paym'^ The first 
payment, 21/., at the l)egininge of the worke. The 2'^ 
paymt., 21/., when the frame is reared. The 3^^ paymt. is 
21/., w""'' is to be paid at the finishing of it. 

" And it is agreed That if it he found by incHfferent men 
that the said John Pickeringe hath deserued 3/. more, Then 
the towne is to ])ay it him. If it be found that the said 
John hath deserued 3/. lesse, hee is to abate it: And the 
said John Pickeringe doeth Couenant to finish it bv the 15*'' 
day of the 4^'' moneth [June] next ensuinge the date hereof. " ' 

The Cape Ann side of the mainland, lying immediately 
north of Salem, and separated from it by an expanse of 
water about two tenths of a mile wide, now called Beverly 
Harbor, was early resorted to by the first settlers of Salem 
to ])rocure thatch for the roofs of their dwellings. Richard 
Brackenbury, who had arrived there in 1628, in the Abigail, 
with Governor John Endicott, attests this fact in a deposi- 
tion, in which he avers: " The same yeare wee came ouer, it 
was that wee tooke a farther possession on the north side of 
Salem ferrye, comonly caled Cape An Side, by cutting 
thach for our houses, and soone after laid out lotts for til- 
lage land on the said Cape An Side, and (iuickl\- after sun- 
(fi-y houses were built on the said Cape An Side." 

The ferry, it appears, was established on December 26, 



Town Records of Salem. Salem, iS68. Pp. Si, 82. 



88 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

1636, as seems evident from the following record under that 
date: "It is agreed, That John Stones shall keepe a fferry 
(to begin this day) betwixt his house, on the neck vpon the 
North point, and [the] Cape Ann Syde, & shall giue dilligent 
attendance thervpon, dureing the space of three yeares, 
vnless he shall giue iust occation to the Contrary, and in 
Consideracon therof he is to haue two pence for a stranger, 
and one penny from an inhabitant: moreouer the sd. Jn". 
Stones doth p[ro]mis[e] to p[ro]vide a conveniant boat for 
the sd. purpose betwixt this & the first month next coming 
after the date hereof." 

Winter Harbor, later called Cat Cove, was bounded on 
the west and north sides by the land forming the short and 
wide peninsula known as Salem Neck. Immediately south- 
east of the well-sheltered haven lay Winter Island. Among 
the early possessors of land at or near Cat Cove were Hum- 
phrey Woodbury, Roger Conant, Henry Bayley, John 
Browne, Richard Hollingworth, Joseph and Christopher 
Young, Peter Woolf, John Pride, and Henry Swan. 

Opposite the north point of Salem Neck, about three 
fourths of a mile northward of it, and on the Cape Ann side 
of the town of Salem, lay another but a more spacious bay 
called Mackerel Cove, which now bears the name of Beverly 
Cove. The first of the early settlers to seat themselves on 
the mainland margining Mackerel Cove were Jeffry Massey, 
Richard Brackenbury, William Woodbury, Nicholas and 
Edmund Patch, and John Lovett. 

The evident i)urpose of the settlers who obtained allot- 
ments of land at or near Cat and Mackerel coves, was to 
engage in the catching and curing of fish for exportation, 
which business, when diligently pursued, was a highly 
profitable one at that time. 

About a mile northward of Mackerel Cove was a rise of 
ground, probably not more than a hundred and fifty feet in 
height above the level of the sea, called Snake Hill. Be- 
tween it and Mackerel Cove, the land, although in places 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 89 

rocky and swampy, was considered valuable for cultivation, 
and not a few of the settlers obtained tracts of it, on which 
they built themselves homesteads, where many of their 
descendants still live. Near the western foot of Snake Hill 
is a chalybeate spring, which obtained the name of the 
Iron-Mine Spring. It is said that iron ore was found near 
it, and for a time a mine was worked there, "l)ut not with 
sufficient profit to warrant a continuance of the business." ' 

In 1638, when Samuel, son of Thomas and Elizabeth 
Copson Edson, was five and twenty years old, a settler from 
the colony of Massachusetts Bay arrived at Fillongley, 
" who, " as recorded in one of the parish books, " came out of 
New England with a pass." His description of the natural 
attractiveness of the region of Massachusetts Ba}% and the 
many enticing advantages which it presented to settlers, at 
once engaged the thoughts of vSamuel Edson. He realized 
that however long he might labor to acquire land or other 
property in England, his efforts would nevertheless be 
futile by reason of the unwillingness of the large and the 
small landowners to part with any they possessed, and that 
the only opportunity which he niight have for advancing 
his interests there, lay, evidently, in a chance of his l)ec()m- 
ing a tenant of a small farm of a limited acreage. Con- 
siderations such as these gave additional U^vcc to the 
pleas that were made to induce young men to become set- 
tlers in New England, where they could ha\'e innumerable 
advantages for furthering themselves in llie ])ossession of 
property and in a far wider and freer exercise of political 
and social privileges. 

Samuel Edson, furthermore, saw that his determination 
to become a colonist of Massachusetts Bay would pemiit his 
immediate marriage to Susanna ()rcull, willi whom he liad 



^ .\)i)ials of Salcin. By Joseph B. Felt. SaU-ni. 1S45. P]). 208,231. — Toicn 
Records o] Salem (pi-intcd), Salem, 1S6S. Pp. 12, 2O, 29, 7,t,, 35, 36, 38, 41, 
55, 63, 65, 66, 67, 72, 76, 78, 80, 86, 90. — History of HcTcrly. By Edwin M. 
Stone. Boston, 1S43. P. 5. 



90 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

plighted troth before he had given any thought to his going 
to New England. The Orcutt family, as the Edson, had 
long been seated in Warwickshire. The surname appears 
to be an etymological modification of the French compound, 
Orcote, which in England became corrupted into Alcott, 
Orcutt, Aucott, and Howcote. Although many descend- 
ants of this long-known and highly respected family still 
reside in several of the parishes adjoining the parish of 
Fillongley, no trace of Susanna Orciitt's parents seems now 
to exist. The church register in which their baptism and 
marriage may have been entered is in all probability no 
longer extant. 

Samuel Edson and his wife likely took passage in a ship 
which set sail from England for Salem either about the end 
of May or the beginning of June, 1639. Their voyage 
thither doubtless followed their marriage, and was the more 
enjoyable because of the various expectations and plans 
they then formed of making a home under a roof-tree of 
their own planting. 

Arriving at Salem about the middle of July, they were 
the recipients of hearty welcomes from their Warwickshire 
friends and acquaintances settled there, as well as from the 
other inhabitants, including the Rev. John Fisk, the fourth 
minister in successive charge of the church of that planta- 
tion, and the local officers, styled "the Townsmen." 

On the twenty-fifth of July, they, " the Townsmen ' ' — ex- 
Governor John Endicott, William Hathorne, John Wood- 
bury, Lawrence Leach, Roger Conant, and John Balch — took 
into consideration the application made by Samuel Edson 
for the grant of a site for a dwelling and of a parcel of land. 
As recorded on the forty-ninth page of the " Town-Book," ' 
the following minute sets forth their action respecting his 
request : 

' The early records of the town of Salem are contained in two volumes : the 
"Town-Book," beginning December 26, 1636, and the "Book of Grants," be- 
ginning October 1, 1634. 



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92 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" 25th day of the 5th moneth 1639. 

" Samuell Edson is intertayned to be an inhabitant 
within this towne, and halfe an acre of ground is graunted 
him neere Catt Cove & 5 acres more for plantinge ground." ' 

The penmanship of the clerk who made the minute in 
the " Town Book," it may be pertinent to remark, is similar 
to the calligraphy of the most of the legal documents and 
church registers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
The general uniformity of the chirography in legal docu- 
ments of an early date is said to be due to the fact that all 
such records were " prepared by the clergy, who throughout 
Europe formed one body ; but as the art of writing became 
more general amongst the laity, other styles were intro- 
duced." ^ 

The phraseology of the introductory words of the minute, 
"intertayned to be an inhabitant," suggests the inference 
that Samuel Edson had not fully determined to settle per- 
manently at Salem, but possibly might, should circum- 
stances thereafter incline him. The grant of a half acre of 
ground near Cat Cove it may be said affords good ground 
for the supposition that it was his intention to engage ex- 
perimentally in the business of catching and curing of fish 
for exportation. 

Cat Cove early bore the name of Winter Harbor, extend- 
ing northeastwardly between Salem Neck and Winter 
Island, the two being now connected by a narrow causeway, 
built, as early as 1667, at the northeasterly end of Winter 
Island. "Previous to the building of this causeway," it is 
said, "there was a good passage for vessels between the 
island and the Neck. Winter Island and Salem Neck were, 
in the early days, especially devoted to the fishing business 
and to ship building. A small village of fishermen occupied 
the island, which with the fish flakes, presses, and fish- 



' Town Records of Salem. (Printed) Salem, 1868. P. 89. 
2 Handbook of Heraldry. By John E. Cussans. Fourth Edition. Lon- 
don, 1893. P. 291. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 93 

houses presented at times a lively appearance."' The 
causeway now uniting the Salem Neck and Winter Island 
forms two inlets; the larger being the haven early known 
as Winter Harbor and Cat Cove. 

The log dwelling erected by Samuel Edson was no 
doubt in its architectural proportions and features some- 
what similar to those of the other rudely built houses neigh- 
boring it. Upon seeing the smoke of the initial fire kindled 
on its hearthstone issuing from the catted chimney of this 
their first home in New England, the gratified occupants 
may have regarded it as votive incense rising heavenward 
from an altar of thanksgiving. The birth of their first 
child beneath the thatch of this humble habitation was one 
of the happy associations that long endeared it to them by 
remembrance. 

Samuel Edson 's intention of wholh^ devoting his time 
and attention to the cultivation of a farm seems evident 
from the following minute of the action of the "Towns- 
men," in August, 1642. 

"Granted to Samuel Edson 25 acres of land joyning to 
Humphrey Woodbury's farme in Mackerell Cove & 2 acres 
of medow where he can fynd y* thereabout, to be laid out 
by the towne." 

The location of the smaller parcel of land was, in De- 
cember, 1643, more definitely described in the following 
order of the town authorities: "The twoe acres of meadow 
that were formerlie granted to Samuell Edson are ordered 
to be layed out in the pine meadow neere Mr. Kenniston's 
farme . " ^ 

The assignment to him of these two parcels of land 
lying on the Cape Ann side of the town led him to erect a 
dwelling ()n an eligible part of the larger tract oxerlooking 
Mackerel Cove, to which lie moved his faniil}- and house- 
hold goods from Cat Cove. 

' Old Xaumkcag. A n Historical Sketch of the City of Salcin. Hy C\ H . Web- 
ber and \V. S. Nevens. Salem, 1877. P. 221. 

^ Town Records of Salcni. (Printed) Salem, 186S. Pp. 113, 122. 



94 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

The physical features of the mainland immediately 
north of Mackerel Cove evidently made it a more attractive 
locality for a homestead than the low and unengaging sur- 
roundings of Cat Cove. The extensive prospect of hills and 
undulating land southward of the rocky summit of Snake 
Hill not only embraces a wide view of the curvature of the 
coast forming the recess early known as Mackerel Cove, 
but also of the island-dotted bay beyond it. 

As much of the diverse and interesting information con- 
tained in many of the entries in the " Town- Book " relates 
to the contemporary life and customs of the people of the 
town of Salem, when Samuel Edson was one of its inhabi- 
tants, the following orders seem sufficiently noteworthy to 
be quoted: 

" Ordered that twoe [persons] be appointed euery Lords 
day to walke forth in the time of Gods wo^'shippe, to take 
notice of such as either lye about the meeting house w^'^out 
attending to the word or ordinances, or that lye at home or 
in the fields, w*out giuing good account thereof, and to 
take the names of such psons & to present them to the 
Magistrate, whereby they may be accordinglie p''ceeded 
aginst." 

" Ordered that there shall be no buriall w*''in the towne 
but that there shall be word giuen to the keep[er] of the 
meeting howse to ring the bell whereby notice may be 
giuen to the towne thereof a little before the buriall." 

" Ordered that a note be published on the next Lecture 
day [in September, 1644,] that such as haue children to be 
kept at schoole would bring in their names & what they 
will giue for one whole yeare & Also That if any poore body 
hath children or a childe to be put to schoole & not able to 
pay for their schooling That the Towne will pay it by a 
rate." 

" Ordered & Agreed that all such as God stirres vp their 
hearts to contribute to the aduancemt of learning ffor the 
maintayninge of poore skollers at the Colledge at Cam- 



/ 

/ 



EDSONb ... ENGLAND AND AMERICA 95 

bridge, that they bringe in to Mr. Price w*Mn one moneth 
what they please to giue to enter their names w^^ Mr. 
fflagge & what they giue or contribute." 

" It is pmitted that such as haue fishing lotts about 
Winter Harbo'" [Cat Cove] & the Hand shall haue libertie 
to fence in their lotts to keepe off the swine & goates from 
their fish, soe that they leaue it open after harvest is in." 

" Ordered that if Any man w^^'in the towne of Salem 
shall take any wolfe w^'^in the precincts of Salem, And bring 
hini to the meeting house aliue he shall haue for eu''y such 
wolfe 155. And for eu''ie wolfe that hee killeth hee shall 
haue 10s. to be paid vnto him by the towne." ' 

Marl^lehead — so open to view from the Cape Ann side of 
the town, which Wood described in his New-England's Pros- 
pect as "a place which lieth four miles full south from Salem, 
and is a very convenient place for a plantation, especially 
for such as will set upon the trade of fishing, ' ' — was made a 
town on March 12, 1648. 

Although neither the name of Samuel Edson nor that of 
his wife appears on any of the published lists of the early 
members of the church at Salem, there is no evidence ad- 
ducible to warrant an assertion that they were not. Like- 
wise there is no information ascertainable to substantiate 
the baptism there of any of the six children that were born 
to them. On the contrary, the asstimption that they were 
not baptized there by the Rev. Edward Norris, the pastor 
of the church at Salem from March 18, 1640, to 1657, seems 
wholly indefensible for the same want of evidence. Noth- 
ing is known, moreover, of the motives causing Samuel 
Edson to move from the town with his family, as he did in 
165 1, after residing on his farm at Mackerel Cove nine years. 
In the deed by which he conveyed, on September 24. 1655, 
liis property there to William Br()\vnc\ lie speaks of himself 
as " late of Salem, in the Countie of Essex, in New England, " 

As set forth by the inslrumciU of c()nve\-ance. he ])arted 

I Town Records of Salem. Salem, i86S. Pj). 131, 144, 132, 135,92, 107. 



96 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



with his real estate in the town of Salem, " for and in con- 
sideration of thirty-eight pounds sterling." His property 
embraced "one dwelling-house, a bam, and ten acres of 
upland, . . . with all the appurtenances thereto be- 
longing, ... on the Cape Ann siae, . . . between 
the land of Robert Lemon on the west, and the land and 
house of John Black on y" east. . . . Alsoe twenty-five 
acres of upland, between Snake Hill and y*" land of Humphry 
Woodbery. Alsoe two acres of medow, . . . lying 
betweene the meddow of Wm. Dodg[e] on ye 
south, and Mr. Roger Conant on the north. Moreover 
twenty acres of upland, w''^ was Thomas Bracketts, given 
by y'^ towne of Salem to John Ward, his pr'decessor, and is 
adjoyning to y® land of Osmand Trask, which he bought of 
Jonathan Porter, with two acres of meddow belonging to 
it, butting upon y^ meddow of Jeffrey Massey, in a meddow 
called Wenham meadow. As alsoe four acres of med[dow] 
in ye aforsd. Wenham meddow, and was formerly ye 
medow of John Bushnell, given him by y^ towne of Salem, 
all of w^^ sd. p 'cells of land are in y'' township of Salem 
aforesd." ' 



^ 



Essex County Registry of Deeds, South District. Book ii., pp. 212, 213. 



Chapter IV 

Samuel Hdson, a Freeman of Hridgevvater 

J651-1692 

'T'HE territory originally lying within the bounds of the 
^ town of Bridgewater was granted, in 1645, ^7 ^^^ 
General Court of the Colony of New Plymouth to the in- 
habitants of the town of Duxbury for a i)lantation. The 
Indian right and title to it was conveyed on March 23, 1649, 
to Captain Miles Standish, Samuel Nash, and Constant 
South worth, representatives of the townsmen of Duxbury, 
by a chief called Ousamequin (Massasoit), Sachem of the 
Country of Poconocket, for seven coats (a yard and a half 
of cloth in a coat), nine hatchets, eight hoes, twenty knives, 
four moose skins, and ten and a half yards of cotton cloth. 
The tract, named by the natives Satucket, was about seven 
miles square. 

The land forming the plantation was apportioned to 
fifty-four propfietors, of whom only sixteen became occu- 
pants of their shares: Thomas Hayward, Nathaniel Willis, 
John Willis, William Bassett, John Washburn, junior, John 
Ames, Thomas Gannett, William Brett, John Cary, Samuel 
Tompkins, Arthur Harris, John Fobes, Exi^erience Mitchell, 
John Haward (Howard) and Solomon Leonard. 

The ])rincipal stream irrigating the plantation was 
titled Nuncketest, or Nuncketetest, by the Indians. Now 
geographically denominated the Town River, it flows north- 
easterly from a pond known as the Ni]>]3enicket, until at its 
most northern reach, where now is the village of West 

7 97 



98 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Bridgewater, it meanders southeasterly to the larger stream 
denominated in later years the Taunton River. 

As described by recent writers, the soil in so wide an area 
of country is of different kinds. In certain parts of the 
town, and particularly along the rivers and brooks, "it is 
of a good quality and very productive." On what are 
named "the ])lains," it is of "a light mould," arable, and 
yields "good crops of grain." The meadow lands contigu- 
ous to the water-courses and swamps are highly valued for 
the large c^uantities of hay annually derived from them. 

The earliest occupation of the plantation by New Eng- 
land colonists was begun in 1 65 1 . Thn t A^ear, Samuel Edson 
of Salem was numbered aniong its first settlers,' each of 
whom, when proprietors, was allotted six acres of land 
along the northernmost reach of the Nuncketest or Town 
River on which to erect a homestead. The site of the first 
allotted "house-lots" cannot be determined with any ex- 
actitude of metes and bounds from any of the ])articulars 
relating to them in the records of the town of Duxbury and 
those of the town of Bridgewater. 

How and by whom Samuel Edson was influenced to 
make the Duxbury Plantation his second place of settle- 
ment, there is no tradition nor writing to afford infor- 
mation. The name of William Brett, one of the original 
proprietors, a descendant of ancestors living in the vicinity 
of Fillonglcy, Warwickshire, in the sixteenth century, may 
be a clue to the discovery of an answer to the pertinent in- 
terrogation. From him Samuel Edson appears to have 
obtained his first proprietary right to a share in the lands 
of the plantation, as is disclosed by the following deed, 
bearing date of " December the loth, anno domini, 1652 " : 

" Know all men by these presents that I, William Brett 
of Bridgewater, planter in the pattent of New Plymouth in 

^ Williams Latham, an acknowledged authority on matters relating to the 
early history of the town of Bridgewater, says that Samuel Edson settled there 
in 1651. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 99 

New England, do with the free and full consent of Margaret 
mv wife, sell, make over, and fully confirm imto Samuel 
Edson, sometime inhabitant of the town of Salem in the 
Massachusetts government, now inhabitant of the town of 
Bridgewater, all my right and interest in full and com])lete 
purchase of land ]iurchased by me the aforesaid William 
Brett of Constant Southworth of Duxbury in the ])attent 
of New Plymouth, the house lot containing about five 
acres only excepted and remaining still my ])roper land, I 
say all the rest of the land, upland and meadow lands, and 
with the rest undivided in the townshi]:) of Bridgewater, 
with all the immunities and privileges l)elonging thereunto, 
and do, by these presents, discharge myself, heirs, inheri- 
tors, and assigns, or any of them, from having any right, 
interest or title thereunto, and engage myself to defend the 
sale of it in su]_)]3ort of the fore named, his 

heirs, and do wholly make over and confirm the said lands 
unto Samuel Edson, him, his heirs, inheritors, and assigns 
forever. 

" In witness whereof, I have set to my hand and seal, 
the day, month, and year above written. 

" Witness hereunto " William Brett 

" Arthur Hains his H mark " Margaret Brett ^ 
"William Brett " her mark M. ^ 

" 23 July 1660. This deed was acknowledged before me, 
"Constant Southworth, Assistant." ' 

"Note by j . I'olifs. — 'I'lu- C'oiislanl Soutliwortli before whom this deed was 
acknowledsjjed, was one of the original proprietors of Bridgewater, and he with 
Miles Standish and Samuel Nash took the deed of Ousame(|uin. the Indian chief. 
He was born before the arriwal of his mother, the Widow Alice Southworth, at 
Plymouth, which was in 1623. Hi- was a distinguished man in the colony, and 
at the time of his affixing his signature [to the deed], was one of the Governor's 
assistants or counsellors. His mother niarried Gov. Wni. Bradford, and one of 
Southworth's daught(M-s married Capt. Benj. Church, distinguished in Philip's 
War." 



' A Genealogical Account of the Edsons, early settled in Bridgeivater, with 
Appendices. Lowell: Thos. C. James, printer, 27 Merrimack Street, 1864. 
Appendix, No. 2, p. xi. 

L.ofC. 



loo EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

On June 3, 1656, the plantation, then known for a num- 
ber of years as the town of Bridgewater, was incorporated a 
separate town by the General Court, as is set forth in the 
following act : "Ordered, that henceforth Duxburrow New 
Plantation bee allowed to bee a townshipe of y* selfe, des- 
tinct from Duxburrow, and to bee called by the name of 
Bridgewater, prouided that all publicke rates bee borne by 
them with Duxburrow vpon equall proportions." On July 
3, that year, the General Court further ordered that the 
rates should "bee paied to the cheife marshall, the one 
halfe in wheat, and the other halfe in Indian corn," and 
that the town of Bridgewater should "beare one pte [part] 
of three with Duxburrow, . . . for the officers wages 
and the publicke charges." Complying with the order, the 
town of Bridgewater paid that year into the treasury of the 
colony taxes amounting to two pounds and three pence, and 
the town of Duxbury six pounds nine pence. 

The first and only town officer elected that year, under 
the act of incorporation, was John Gary, constable. In 
May, 1657, the following officers were chosen to serve the 
town: John Willis, deputy to the General Court; Lawrence 
Willis, junior, member of the Grand Inquest ; Samuel Tomp- 
kins, constable; Arthur Harris and John Haward (Howard), 
surveyors of highways. 

The first of the settlers of the town to be distinguished 
by the title of "Freeman," consequent upon their taking 
the prescribed oath acknowledging themselves subject to 
the government of the Colony of New Plymouth and prom- 
ising obedience to the orders and commands of the officers 
entrusted with the administration of its affairs, were Thomas 
Hayward, John Willis, William Bassett, William Brett, 
John Gary, Samuel Tompkins, Arthur Harris, Lawrence 
Willis, Thomas Hayward, junior, and Josiah Standish. The 
same title was acquired afterward by taking " the Oath of 
Fidelity" to the government. In 1657, the following in- 
habitants of the town of Bridgewater were registered as hav- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA loi 

ing taken it: Samuel Edson, Lawrence Willis, Francis God- 
frey, John Ames, Guido Bayley, Mark Lathro]), Thomas Haw- 
ard (Howard), William Snow, and John Haward (Howard).' 

Being one of the proprietors of the town of Bridgewater, 
Samuel Edson, in 1654, was api)ortioned twenty acres of 
upland and two and one half acres of meadow in that year's 
division of the undivided lands. As evidenced by the 
tenor of the following deed, "Dated May ye 17th, Anno 
Domini, 1656," he became the owner of another proprie- 
tary right in the lands of the town, and the possessor of a 
house, two saw-mills, and two house-lots: 

" Know all men by these presents, that I, Joshua Rea of 
Salem in New England parts of America, late inhabitant in 
Bridgewater, formerly called Nuncketetest, in the pattent 
of New Plymouth, with the free and willing consent of 
Sarah Rea my wife, have sold unto Samuel Edson in Bridge- 
water, that is to say, my house with the two house lots 
thereunto adjoining, with all my fvill purchase or share of 
lands and meadows that are already laid out or shall be 
further laid out, with all the appurtenances appertaining 
unto the same within the bounds and territories of Nunc- 
ketetest alias Bridgewater, to have and to hold the said 
house and saw-mills unto the aforesaid Samuel Edson and 
his heirs and assigns forever. And I, the said Joshua Rea, 
for me and my heirs, do award the said house and Lands 
with all the ai)purtenances belonging unto the same unto 
Samuel Edson and his heirs; — in witness whereof I liave 
set my hand. 

"Witness: Nathaniel Willis, " Joshua Rea. 

"John Hayward."^ 

' History of the luirly Scttlcnioil oj f-lridgewater. i)! I'lyiiunith ('on)ily, Massa- 
chusetts, including an extensive Family Register. By Nahuni Mitchell. Boston: 
printed for the author by Kidder & Wright, 32 Congress Street, 1S40. Pp. 9, 
II, 12, 25, 26. 27, 28.- — Records of the Colony of Neic Plynunith. Edited by 
Nathaniel B. SluirtlelT. Husldn, 1S55. — Court (>rdcrs, vol. iii., jip. gg, loi, lob, 
115. — Records, etc., 1857. — Miscellaneous Records, p. 185. 

^ A Genealogical Account of the Edsons, early settled i)t Hridgeivater, icith A p- 
pendices. Lowell, 1864. Appendix No. 2, p. xii. 



I02 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



The advantages of having saw-mills in the town shortly 
after the coming there of the first settlers soon acquired for 
it an importance that largely influenced other colonists and 
immigrants to seat themselves within its borders. Using 
sawed lumber in the construction of their dwellings and 
barns, instead of timber dressed and shaped by axes and 
adzes, they were consequently enabled to make them more 




SITE OF DEACON SAMUEL EDSON'S MILLS AT WEST BRIDQEWATE R, MASS 

attractive in appearance and to frame them more closely, 
whereby they were less uncomfortable in winter, either as 
dwellings sheltering families or buildings stabling cattle 
and horses. The practical turn of Samuel Edson's thoughts 
led him to infer that, with a steady influx of settlers occupy- 
ing land in the vicinity of the mills, an increased demand 
would be niade upon them for beams, girders, joist, plank, 
and other parts of buildings, and as a result the purchase of 
the mills would be a remunerative investment. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 103 

Tradition says that the two saw-mills occupied in part 
the site of the saw-mill now at West Bridgewater, on the 
north bank of the Town Ri\er, between South and Main 
streets. The operating machinery of these early-built saw- 
mills was no doubt similar to that described l)y the Bishop 
of Ely, ambassador from Mary, Queen of Engkuid. to the 
Court of Rome, inspected by him, in 1555, in a saw-mill near 
the city of Lyons. 

"The saw^-mill is drix'cn with an upright wheel, and the 
water that maketh it go is gathered whole into a narrow 
trough, which delivereth the same water to the wheel. Tliis 
wheel hath a piece of timber put to the axle-tree end, like 
the handle of a broch, and fastened to the end of the saw, 
which being turned with the force of the water, hoisteth up 
and down the saw, that it continuall}^ eateth in, and the 
handle of the same is kept in a rigall of wood frr-m swerving. 
Also the timber lieth, as it were, u])on a ladder, which is 
brought 1:)y little and little to the saw with another [dejvice. " 

At that time saw-niills had not been introduced into 
England, but were before the close of the sixteenth century. 
The first in Holland was erected, it is said, in 1596, at 
Saardam.' 

Perceiving by the patronage given his saw-mills that he 
could in like manner personally benefit the ])eo])le of the 
town by erecting, near the flume feeding his saw-mills, a 
grist-mill, Samuel Edson, about the year 1660, undertook 
the building of one. Importing from England such parts 
of the iron machinery as were needed to operate a run of 
stones, he had a ])air i)ro])crly made from a good (quality of 
millstone-grit, ((uarricd not far west of llie seUkMucnt. 
Fragments of the first bed-stone and runner that were used 
for many years by liim, are still to be seen iml)CMUkHl in the 
ground on the site of the original grist-mill. Tradition re- 
lates that the pro])rictors of the town, desiring to afford him 

^ Knight's Aincricau Mechanical I )ictioiinry. liy I-2il\\anl il l\iii>.;lu. Bos- 
ton, i8cS2. Vol. iii., p. 2041. 



I04 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

a suitable attestation of their appreciation of his public 
spirit and enterprise in erecting the first grist-mill within its 
bounds, presented him with a full and complete share in its 
land. The grist-mill continued in his possession until Jan- 
uary 15, i688-Q, when he conveyed it, with other property, 
to his five daughters. In the deed given them, it is styled 
his " corn-mill." ' 

The people of the town did not enjoy the ministrations 
of a clergyman until about the beginning of the year 1660. 
A Rev. Mr. Bunker then visited the settlement, and preached 
so acceptably that they formally tendered him an annual 
salary of thirty pounds, or in lieu of that sum, his boarding, 
termed "diet" in the call, and twenty pounds. 

Inasmuch as he could not be induced to accept the offer, 
they projected the erection of a house which they intended 
to present as a gift to the minister who should become their 
pastor, as is particularized by the minutes of the meeting 
held in 1661, on "the sixth and twentieth of December," 
when it was agreed that there should be "a house built for a 
minister upon the town's lands," where it should " be thought 
most convenient, ' ' and that it and the grounds thereof should 
" be freely given to that minister ' ' who should " live and die ' ' 
among them, " being called by the towne to the work of the 
ministry, or by a church gathered according to the order of 
the Gospel, with the consent of the towne." It was also 
agreed at the same meeting that the said minister should be 
given "also a compleat purchase" right or share in the 
town lands, "as other townesmen" had been privileged to 
enjoy. 

Thereupon the building of the house was begun, but the 
work progressed slowly, as appears by the date and pro- 
visions of the following contract: 

"An agreement made between the towne and John 

' The deed was not recorded until April 19, 1736. A Genealogical Account of 
the Edsons, early settled in Bridgewater, with Appendices. Lowell, 1864. Pp. 
6,7- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 105 

Willis, seynior, and John Ames, for the finishing of the 
chimnies, backs, hearths, and ouen [oven] belonging to the 
minister's. And they are to find all and draw all, both 
clay, stones, and 200 bricks, for the aforesaid chimnies, 
backs, and ouen and hearths, and to do it suf^ciently; and 
the towne, for their paines, are to pay to them next haruest, 
twenty bushells of good marchantable corne, and the work 
to be finished by the last of August insuing ; the date hereof 
being now the 13th, thirteenth of May, 1664; to he paid 
when Indyan corne is marchantable." 

The venerable, reconstructed, enlarged, renovated, and 
occupied building stands at a close remove from the Town 
River, on the north side of River Street (originally a road 
leading to the Great Meadows), and not far west of the 
intersection of that thoroughfare and Howard Street. The 
house was original!}' two stories high in front and one story 
in the rear, with a gable roof, having a longer, but not as 
steep a slope as the front section. The entry, or passage, 
on which the front door opened, was five feet wide. A 
steep stairway, alx)ut eight feet from the front door, as- 
cended to the upper-floor chambers. On the lower floor, in 
the southeast corner of the house, was a front room ten 1)>- 
twelve feet, and 1)ack of it a bedroom, and beyond it a 
kitchen and ])antr)'. The chimney was on the east side of 
the house. Besides the ])assage on the up])er floor at the 
head of the stairs, there was a front room, and l)ack of it a 
sleeping chamber.' 

Through the agency of the Rev. Increase Mather, the 
people of the town, in 1662, learned that the Rev. James 
Keith, a student of divinity, eighteen years of age, educated 
at Aberdeen, Scotland, had arrix-ed at Boston, whose ser- 
vices as a i)astor might be secured should they extend him 
an invitation to improve "his gifts amongst them in the 
work of the ministry." This they speedily rcMjuested him 

' Epitaphs in Old lindgcwatcr, Massachusetts. Hy Williams Lalhain. Bridge- 
water, 1882. Appendix, pp. 238, 241. 



io6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

to do, and he, going there, did improve his gifts, both men- 
tal and spiritual, with such marked ability and success, that, 
having the "approbation, by the testimony of the reverend 
elders of other churches in Christ, to whom he was known," 
they determined to engage him for the pastorship of the 
congregation which he had organized while passing his 
candidature among them. 

The first sermon preached by him in the town was de- 
livered from a broad and conspicuous rock in a pasture- 
field bordering southwardly u]:)on the Town River, not far 
eastwardly of Samuel Edson's mills. His text was taken 
from the Book of Jeremiah, i., 6: " Behold, I cannot speak, 
for I am a child." The young evangelist's eloquence at 
once engaged the attention of the throng of standing men, 
women, and children, and the spiritual message that he gave 
to them of the love and goodness of God was strikingly con- 
firmed by the luxuriant herbage on which their cattle were 
feeding in the contiguous meadows, by the golden cast of 
the ripening grain, presaging an abundance of bread for 
themselves and other colonists; by the berry- jewelled vines, 
proffering them dainties more wholesome than those con- 
fected by men; these and other of the lavish and perfect 
gifts of the Heavenly Father of which he reminded them, 
he declared, daily appealed to them for thanksgiving and 
joyful ap|)reciation. 

He was duly settled as pastor of the congregation on 
February i8, 1664, and was given the parsonage and the 
double house-lot of twelve acres on which it had been built, 
a proprietary right in the town lands, and an annual salary 
of forty pounds, twenty to be paid at Boston in money, and 
twenty in the- town. In 1667, thirty cords of wood were 
voted as an annual addition to his salary. 

The marriage of the Rev. James Keith and Susanna, the 
eldest daughter of Samuel and Susanna Orcutt Edson, on 
May 3, 1668, elicited from the different members of the con- 
gregation many honoring expressions of joy and affection. 







OLD HOUSE OF REV. JAMES KEITH. 1662 




HOUSE ENLARGED. t0j6 







RRLSEXT HOUSE. _iS3- 

(FROM " EPITAPHS IN OLD BRIOGEWATER," BY WILLIAMS I atham 

107 



io8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

The site of the first meeting-house, erected by the people 
of the town in 1661, on the west side of the Boston Road, is 
now designated by a stone monument, about five feet high 
and a foot square at the base, planted south of the gate of 
the yard in front of the residence of Francis E. Howard, at 
the inner edge of the sidewalk on the west side of Howard 
Street. One of the inscriptions on the stone perpetuates 
the following information: "The first meeting-house prob- 
ably stood within a few rods of this spot, 1 661-1674." An- 
other: "Supposed centre of the first burying-ground in 
ancient Bridgewater previous to 1700." 

Samuel Edson, being in 1657 the proprietor of two 
shares in the town lands, was apportioned that year one 
hundred acres of the undivided lands, and, in 1665, then 
the owner of three shares, thirty; and, in 1666, sixty. These 
apportionments, including the twenty- two and one half 
acres assigned him in 1654, made him the possessor of two 
hundred and twelve and one half acres, exclusive of the land 
which he had purchased, in 1652, of William Brett, and that 
which he had bought, in 1656, of Joshua Rea.' The culti- 
vation of these different tracts was not immediately begun, 
for it is likely a number of years intervened before the more 
arable sections of them were wholly cleared of bushes and 
trees, and rendered fit for ploughing. The meadow-land 
also required the removal of a great variety of wild vines, 
and no little ditching in places to free it from standing 
water. The value of the property proportionally increased 
as the land became productive of larger crops of grain and 
hay. 

It was the good fortune of the early settlers of the town 
of Bridgewater to enjoy their possessions many years with- 
out molestation, either by hostile bands of predatory In- 
dians or invading forces of a foreign enemy. In 1667, when 

' History of the Early Settlcinoit of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Massa- 
chusetts, including an extensive Family Register. By Nahum Mitchell. Boston, 
1840. Pp. 32, 33, 42, 43, 44, 61, 62. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AAIERTCA 109 

the war then existing between England and the Netherlands 
was threatening the peace of the New England colonists, and 
when the belligerent attitude of France seemed to presage 
consequences of danger for them, considerable anxiety be- 
gan to be felt concerning the issue of events. Fearing that 
the common enemy might suddenh^ descend upon one or 
the other of the settlements along the coast, the govern- 
ment of the Colony of Plymouth issued orders, in the early 
part of the year, to the authorities of the different towns 
to be prepared to answer any call for men for defence. 
On April 2, that year, the Council of War, in session at New 
Pl}-mouth, appointed Samuel Edson, Nicholas Byram, and 
John Willis, with the commissioned military officers of the 
town, the Bridgewater Council of War, and sent them such 
instructions regarding their duties as would enable them to 
perform the same in a satisfactory manner. 

" The councell of warr haue determined that during any 
appearance of danger a milletary watch [shall] be kept in 
each towne, in the most convenient place or jjlaces for tak- 
ing and pasing an alarum, according to the descretion of 
the commanders and councell in each towne, and according 
to the danger that p[re]sents." 

"That the fiering of three musketts shall make an 
alarum in the night, and that fiers be alsoe madp in the 
night att the place where the alarum did rise." 

"That the troop in each towne [shall] be ordered by 
theire owne officers, and where such are not, b\' such as are 
of the grand councell in that towne, to be redy att all times 
to goe forth as scouts vpon discouery, to carry intellegence 
from ])lace to place as there may be occation, and to 
doe such seruice further as need may require, \'ntill In^ 
si)eciall order of theire cheife commanders they are called 
off." 

" It is determined, that Ducli and French [shall] be 
looked vpon as our comon enemic whiles soe to our nation, 
and shal be resisted, opposed, and expelled by forces of this 



no EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

jurisdiction to theire vtmost power, and that all advan- 
tages shal be vsed to that end." 

" That there [shall] be noe shooting att pigions or any 
other game by day or night whiles danger p[re]sents, but 
onely att an eneniie." 

"That euery towne [shall] prouide som place of retire- 
[ment] for theire weomen and children in case of an alarum, 
as the descretion of each place may giude them, that soe the 
men may with lesse destraction face an enemie." 

"That all p[er]sons in any township, although aboue 
sixty yeares of age, and otherwise vncapable of bearing 
armes, but are of competent estates, and shal be so judged 
by their commanders and councell of that towne, they shal 
be lyable to find a man to watch and ward as occation may 
be, and it [shall] be required of them." 

" That it shal be in the power of such as are appointed 
a councell, in euery towne, in any exigent or sudden occa- 
tion, to dispose of the generall stocke of armes and amuni- 
tion in that towne or any p[ar]te of it as occation may 
rec[uire." ' 

At that time, the towns in the Colony of New Plymouth 
were New Plymouth, Duxbury, Scituate, Marshfield, Sand- 
wich, Taunton, Rehoboth, Yarmouth, Barnstable, East- 
ham, and Bridge water. 

The inhabitants having formally petitioned to have sev- 
eral legally defined highways made through certain parts 
of the town, the General Court, on June 5, 1667, named the 
following persons "to be impaneled to lay out all waies 
requisett ' ' therein : Nicholas Byram, Samuel Edson, Thomas 
Hayward, senior, Samuel Packard, Nathaniel Willis, Lieu- 
tenant Thomas Hayward, Arthur Harris, John Gary, En- 
sign John Haward (Howard), Mark Lathrop, Robert 
Latham, and Joseph Alden; and if by Providence any of 
these should be hindered from serving, Samuel Allen and 

' Records of the Colony of New Plyiitouth. Edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtlelf . 
Boston, 1855. — Court Orders, vol. iv., pp. 144, 145, 146. 



EDSONS IN ENCxLAND AND AAFERTCA 



III 



John Ames were to represent such townsmen. The re])ort 
made to the General Court by the jury, on July 7, 1668, 
contained the following |)aragra])h: 

" It is agreed alsoe by vs, that the way to the great med- 
dow shall come out of Tainiton way att the head of Edward 
Vobes' [FobesJ his six acree lot, and soe at the head of 
Samuel Edson's six acree lots, to William Snowe's and then 
between the said Edson's and vSnowe's lands vnto the 




SITE OF DEACON SAMUEL EDSON'S HOMESTEAD AT WEST BRIDQEWATER, MASS. 
(Center of cellar where Francis H. Howard, K.sq., stood when photii);r.iphed) 

comon, and then to the riuer. These waies were laid out 
by vs att seuerall times as in the yeares 1667 [and] 1668." 

The six-acre lots belonging respectively to Edward 
Fobes, Samuel Edson, and William Snow, were, in 1686, 
the sites of the dwellings of the said owners, as is x'erihed 
by the following order of the town, made that year: 

"Ten acres wood land to be laid out to each purchaser 
[or proprietor of town lands] nearest to their habitations as 
the land will afford it to be laid out. \-iz: — 

" Lots 0)1 llic south side of Towji River, below Good)uan 



112 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Aldens, namely, to William Snow, Samuel Edson, Edward 
Fobes," and eight other residents. 

Tradition also testifies that the homestead in which 
Samuel Edson died stood about five hundred or more feet 
south of Town River (nearly opposite the dwelling of the 
Rev. James Keith, north of the stream), and somewhat con- 
spicuously on a rise of ground midway between the homes 
of Deacon Edward Fobes and William Snow, or about half- 
way between that part of the Taunton Road, now bearing 
the name of South Street, and the highway called Forrest 
Street. 

On the same day that the General Court named the 
Highway Commissioners who made, on July 5, 1668, the 
report relating to the roads laid out by them, Samuel Edson 
and Samuel Packard were appointed surveyors of highways 
for the town of Bridgewater. 

The establishment of a boundary line between the town 
of Bridgewater and the town of Middleborough having he- 
come a matter of local importance to the settlers of the 
older town, the following action is recorded as having been 
taken by them: "The Towne being mett togeither the 23 
of June, 167 1, made choice of Goodman Edson and Deacon 
Willis to goe dow[n] to the Court [at New Plymouth] as 
Agents in the behalf e of the Towne to mannage the Towne 's 
affaires betweene the Towne of Middle Berre and vs, in 
reference to our line or the bounds of our lands between vs 
& them, and the Towne hath giuen them full ])owre to act 
according to their discretion as they shall se cause when 
they are at the Court, and they are to be satisfied for their 
paines." 

A matter of greater interest engaged the attention of the 
people following the action taken at the town meeting held 
on October 11, 1671, to provide them with a more com- 
modious and better constructed house for religious pur- 
poses. As recorded, the towne agreed "that there should 
be a new Meeting House built, 40 foot long & 26 foote wide, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAXI) AX]) AMERICA 113 

and 14 foot stud. And the Towne then chose 5 or 6 men to 
consider of it, namly, Goodman Edsonn, Nickolas Byram, 
Deacon WiUis, John Washborne, Samuel Alhne & John 
Ames, and they weare to treat with a workman aboute it 
to se whearabouts the price wih he or what the Meeting 
House may come to, & so to bring in their answere the next 
Towne Meeting." 

"It was also agreed vpon at the same Towne Meeting 
that Samuel Edsonn, seynior, should haue a too ])ok^ in 
breadth, according to the breadth of his lands laid out to 
hime going to Tauntown, which lands lie this side the 
Deacon's field, on the left hand going, and to runn fowr 
score pole in length, according to the selfe same rang[e] of 
his former laid out lands, & to remoue his 10 acares of land 
from the right hand of the path [or road] going to Taim- 
town, whear it was laid out, that according to his graunt he 
might joyne it to some other of his lands on the other side 
of 4 mile brook, to make way for the placing in of the fore 
named 100 roods of land, to face or rang[e] with his former 
lands laid out, and he is to allow for it in his [or the] next 
deuision [of land]. 

"And Deacon Willis had the same graunt w^^ Goodman 
Edsonn at the same Towne Meeting, according to his |)ro- 
portion of lands which he haue next beyond Goodman Ed- 
sonn 's, and [he] must be accountable for it in his [or the] 
next deuision [of land]." 

The title of " Deacon" with which Samuel Edson is hon- 
ored in the preceding rCvSolution, was evidently derived from 
the office to which he had then recently been elected by the 
members of the Bridgewater church. The prefix, "Good- 
man," was an appellation of res])ect ac(|iiiRMl 1)\- liighly 
esteemed men, and made ])opular in the Aniei'ican colonies 
by an adherence to an old English custom. 

"The first separate or distinct meeting held by the pro- 
prietors" was convened on July g, 1672, when "they chose 
a large committee ' to consider the m:inncr to be adc-)]ited in 



114 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

future for laying out lands ' in the town, which was ordered 
to make a report of the same in the month of October. 
Among other resolutions voted upon at the July meeting 
was one that the town clerk should enter the determination 
of the collected body of proprietors in the record-book, 
whereby that official was afterwards "clerk of the pro- 
prietors." 

In 1674, the town "ordered that a new book for the re- 
cording of lands should be procured, and a committee ap- 
pointed to see that the records were made and transcribed 
correctly." 

In order to possess clear and defendable titles to the dif- 
ferent tracts of land forming the territory of the town of 
Bridgewater, the proprietors, from time to time, purchased 
such as were claimed by the Indians by right of prior pos- 
session. One of the last tracts bought by the town lies on 
the north side of the Titicut River. Having petitioned the 
General Court for permission to buy it, the proprietors ob- 
tained the consent of that legislative body which appointed 
Nicholas Byram, Samuel Edson, and William Brett to ac- 
quire the tract. On November 20, 1672, Pomponoho, an 
Indian, living at Titicut, "sold for the full sum of sixteen 
pounds, viz. six pounds of current money of New England, 
and ten pounds in good merchantable corn, ... all 
the lands lying on the north side of Titicut River within the 
bounds of Bridgewater," excepting one hundred and ten 
acres, to Nicholas Byram, senior, Samuel Edson, senior, and 
William Brett, senior, " in and for the use of the townsmen 
of Bridgewater, joint purchasers with them. " The reserved 
one hundred and ten acres, it is said, were afterward pur- 
chased by individuals settled in the town. 

The first to marry of the eight children of Samuel and 
Susanna Orcutt Edson was Elizabeth, their third daughter, 
who, in the spring of 1663, became the second wife of Rich- 
ard, son of Nicholas Phillips of the town of Weymouth, in 
the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Sarah, their second 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND A^IERICA 115 

daughter, and John, son of John and AHce Dean of the town 
of Taunton, were united in the hoi}' bonds of matrimony on 
November 7, 1663.' As has l^een mentioned, Susanna, 
their eldest daughter, and the Rev. James Keith were mar- 
ried on May 3, 1668. In 1673, Josiah, their third son, 
became the husband of Elizabeth, daughter of John and 
Alice Dean. 

The minutes of the trial of an Indian for murder, on 
October 27, 1674, when " Mr Samuel Edson" served as one 
of the twelve jurors, c[uaintly set forth the proceedings in 
the following way: ''Att this Court, a natiue named Mat- 
thias, allies [alias] Achaweheet, was indicted for killing of 
another natiue named Joseph, allies Chackapanuche. Hee 
put himselfe on tryall by God and the countrey. 

" The verdict of the jury was, — ■ 

" Wee find him guilty of manslaughter by way of chaunce 
medley [chance melee]. 

"The verdict being accepted b}^ the Court, the said 
Matthias was openly cleared of being guilty of wilful min-- 
der, and was released." ^ 

In 1675, at the outbreak of King Philip's War, the in- 
habitants of New England numbered about one hundred 
and twenty thousand of whom probably sixteen thousand 
were able to bear arms. The different tribes of Indians at 
that time in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, the Colony 

^ John and Walter Dean came from England to America in 1637. "The}' 
arrived," says the late Rev. Samuel Deanc (if Scituate, Mass., "at Boston first; 
stopped a 3'ear, or nearlv, at Dorchester, and then came with others to Taun- 
ton." The two brotliers tnolc the Freeman's oath at I'lynii>ulh, Di'ceinher 4, 
1638. John, born about 1600, died in Taunton in 1660. His wife, Alice, sur- 
vived him, probably, as late as 166S. Walter, born between 1615 and 1620, 
married Eleanor, a daughter of Richard Strong of Taunton, England. — Brief 
Memoirs of Jolui and Walter Deane, tivo of the first settlers of Taunton, Mass., 
and of the early generations of their descendants. Ry William Reed Deane, 
assisted by others. Chicago, 1893. Pp. 8, 10, 14. 

^ Records of the Colony of New Plymouth. Edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff. 
Boston, 1855. — Court Orders, vol. iv., jij). 155, 193; vol. v., pp. 93, 105, 156. 
— First Book of Records of the Town of Hridgcwatcr, pp. 62, 63. — History of the 
Early Settlement of Bridgewater. Mitchell, Boston, 1840. Pp. 18, 19, 29. 



ii6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

of New Plymouth, and the Colony of Rhode Island were 
probably represented by ten thousand warriors, of which 
those of the Narragansett tribe were estimated as number- 
ing two thousand. The savages living within the bounds 
of the Colony of New Plymouth did not exceed, it is thought, 
four thousand souls. 

Philip, or Metacomet, son of Massasoit, was the chief or 
king of the Wampanoags or Poconockets, a tribe of Indians 
occupying the region bordering upon the northern part of 
Narragansett Bay, which included the site of the city of 
Bristol, called by the aborigines Poconocket. 

Alexander, the brother of Philip, being the elder, as- 
sumed the kingship of the Wampanoags on the death of 
the father. It was soon discovered that he was plotting 
with the Narragansetts against the English. Thereupon 
the Court at New Plymouth requested his presence there, 
to have him answer the allegations made respecting his 
treacherous conduct. He went, and after explaining the 
nature of his communications with the Narragansetts, he 
returned home, and shortly afterward, probably in 1657, 
died. 

Philip, upon succeeding him as chief of the tribe, began 
negotiating with the Narragansetts to take up arms with 
him and the Wampanoags against the New England colon- 
ists. He, however, renewed treaties of peace and amity 
with the English governors until 167 1, when he loudly but 
falsely declared that some of the colonists had trespassed 
upon and damaged his land. 

In consequence of the hostile appearance of Philip's 
men, deputies of the Colony of New Plymouth and the 
Colony of Massachusetts Bay were assembled at Taunton. 
' ' Philip was sent for to give reasons for such warlike appear- 
ances. He discovered [disclosed] extreme shyness, and for 
some time would not come to the town, and then with a 
large band of his warriors with their arms. He would not 
consent to go into the meeting-house, where the delegates 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 117 

were, until it was agreed that his men should be on one side 
of the house, and the English on the other. 

"On being questioned, he denied hax'ing any ill designs 
upon the English, and said that he came with his men armed 
to prevent any attacks from the Narragansetts ; 1 )ut this false- 
hood was at once detected, and it was evident that they were 
united in their operations. It was also proved before him 
that he had meditated an attack on Taunton, which he con- 
fessed. These steps so confounded him that he consented 
to deliver all his arms into the hands of the English as an 
indemnity for past dangers. All the guns which he brought 
with him, about seventy, were delivered, and the rest were 
to be sent, but never were. . . . This [transfer of fire- 
arms] prevented immediate war, and it required several 
years to repair their loss. 

" Philip was industrious to do this, and, at the same 
time, used his endeavours to cause other tril)cs to engage 
in his cause. He was not ready when the war did begin. 
which, in some ineasure," led to its "failure. Three of his 
men were tried and hanged for the alleged murder of John 
Sassamon [an Indian who had professed conversion to Chris- 
tianity], whom Phili]) had condemned as a traitor. It so 
exasperated Philip and his men that their friends should 
be punished by the English, that they could no longer re- 
strain their violence." 

The fire-arms first owned by the Indians, it is said, were 
obtained from time to time from French fur-traders. Sub- 
sequently, no doubt, they were surre])titiously exchanged by 
English adventurers for peltry. The murderous use of 
them by the savages did not restrain some of the more 
avaricious colonists, who had begun clandestine! \- to ])ro\i(k> 
the Indians with (juns and ammunition, froui eontiniuuu' with 
painstaking secrecy the unlawful ])ractice. It cannot be 
gainsaid that the booty of pluudering and massacring bands 
of savages was not unfrequently taken in exchange for fire- 
arms, powder, and IjuUets, b)' settlers whose riches were 



ii8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

mostly acquired by villainous dealings of this kind with 
crafty Indian chiefs and their subtle subjects. 

The initial evidences of the hostile attitude of the New 
England Indians became more distinct on Sunday, June 21, 
1675, when some of the inhabitants of Swansey, in the Colony 
of Massachusetts Bay, alarmed by a rumor of an intended 
attack by the Wampanoags, under the leadership of Philip, 
hastily quitted their homes and fled to places of near- 
est refuge. Apart from plundering a few of the deserted 
houses, the savages neither committed any act of violence, 
nor killed any of the people that remained at the settlement. 
One of the settlers having shot at an Indian and wounded 
him, King Philip used the incident as a justifying pretext 
for his and his tribe's subsequent atrocities. 

This premonition of impending war caused the govern- 
ment of the Colony of New Plymouth to take timel}^ action 
to have the people of the outlying towns alert and defensive. 
On February 28, 1675, at a meeting of the Colonial Council 
of War, at Marshfield, William Brett, Samuel Edson, and 
John Willis, senior, were appointed a Council of War for 
the town of Bridgewater. The other towns which were at 
that time distinguished by the appointment of local coun- 
cils of war, were Plymouth, Scituate, Duxbury, Barnstable, 
Sandwich, Taunton, Yarmouth, Marshfield, Rehoboth, and 
Eastham. Among the duties of the members of the town 
councils of war, the following were set forth in the orders 
sent them: 

"The said towne councells, together with the comission 
officers, or the major p[ar]te of the whole concurring, shall 
haue power to order all watches and wardings and garrisons 
in their respective townes, and the setting forth of scoutes 
for the safty of the townes, and to take care that the townes 
stocke of amunition, to which they belong, may be sup- 
plyed, and haue power to call the towne together to make 
a rate [of taxation] to defray the charge therof as occation 
may require, and to dispose the said stocke into such places 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND .\^[ERICA 119 

as they shall judge most convenient; and whosoeuer shall 
neglect or refuse to watch or ward, being required and 
ordered so to doe, shall forfeite hue shillings for euery de- 
fatilt, to be leuicd 1)}^ distresse on his estate, if hee haue any 
to answare it; and if noe estate, then to be sett necke and 
heeles, bv order of the coniission officers, not exceeding 
halfe an houre." 

There were other " actes and orders" made and con- 
cluded by the Colonial Council of War from time to time, 
during this period of hostilities, which plainly express the 
general anxiety that then prevailed in the colony regarding 
the safety of the inhabitants of the more exposed settle- 
ments. 

"Many of the early settlers of Bridgewater, " remarl<s 
an anthoritative writer, "were young men born in this 
country, well acc[uainted with the Indian character, and 
therefore well calculated to encounter the troubles and 
dangers of the savage warfare they were soon to experience. 
Being wholly an interior settlement, remote from their 
friends on the seaboard, ' they were strongly urged to desert 
their dwellings, and repair to the towns by the sea side.' 
They, however, resolutely kept their ground, and defended 
their settlement, and encouraged and assisted other towns 
to do the same. Thev erected a stockade or garrison on the 
south side of the river, and also fortified many of their dwell- 
ing houses. At the commencement of hostilities, June 21. 
1675, seventeen of their number, 'well armed and fni-nished 
with horses, the first that were on the march in all the 
country,' went to Meta])oiset, a small settlement about 
twelve miles from Swansey, 'to strengthen the garrison at 
that ])lace.' They were met by people from Swansey, 
driven from their habitations and filled with terror, who 
adx'ised them to retui-n; bnl they fearlessly ])ursue(l their 
course and acc()m])lished their object. Tlu'V werc^ in man_\' 
perils while there, but returned safe after the greatest part 
of the garrison, consisting of sevent\' persons, most of whom 



I20 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

were women and children, were safely conducted on to 
Rhode Island. Six persons of that vicinity, who were 
killed at that time, while they were with their teams con- 
veying their corn into the garrison, were the first that fell 
in that war." 

There were, at that time, in the town, sixty-four " house- 
holders and male children twenty 3^ears old and upwards." 

"It was agreed by the Towne meet togeyther [on] the 
first of November, 1675, that there should be a fortification 
aboute the Meeting House, for the saft}' of the Towne in the 
time of danger, to be made with halfe trees seuen foot hie 
aboue the ground, 6 rood long and 4 rood wide, besides the 
flankers; euery quarter or squaderon [of men] to doe each 
of them a sid[e] or an end, and they that doe the ends must 
make [in] each of them a doore and [on] each of them a 
flanker, and this worke to be finished and donn by the 6th 
of Nouember, insuing the date hearoff . 

Another precautionary act of defence, timely taken for 
the protection of the settlement, is set forth in the follow- 
ing resolution: "It was agreed vpon by the Town mett 
togeither the 20th of Nouember, 1675, that there should be 
a Garrison made about Mr. Keith's house, and the Counsell 
[of War] should take notice of what was to be donn and to 
deuide to euery squadron [of men] their share [of the work]. " 

The year 1676 recorded a series of startling massacres 
and harrowing acts of savagery surpassing description. The 
aggressive enemy, about the end of January, invaded the 
Colony of Massachusetts Bay to the great consternation of 
the people of the defenceless interior settlements. As 
briefly related by a well-informed chronicler, " on the tenth 
of February, several hundred of the foe fell upon Lancaster; 
plundered and burned a great part of the town, and killed 
or captivated forty persons [King Philip probably leading 
the attacking Indians]. On February 2 ist, nearly half of the 
town of Medfield was l^urned, and on the twenty-fifth, seven 
or eight Iniildings were also burned at Weymouth. On 



EDSOXS IX EXGLAXD AXD AMERICA 121 

March 13th, Groton was all destroyed, excepting four garri- 
son houses. On the seventeenth, Warwick had every house 
burned save one. On the twenty-sixth, Marlborough was 
nearlv destroved, and the inhabitants deserted it. The 
same da\' Captain Pierce of Scituate, with fifty English and 
twenty friendly Indians, was cut off with most of his men. 
On the twcnt>'-eighth, forty houses and tliirty barns were 
burned at Rehoboth [in the C'olony of X[ew Plymouth]; and 
the day following, about thirty houses in Providence. The 
main body of the enemy was supposed then to be in the 
woods between Brookfield and Marlborough, and the Con- 
necticut River." 

On Sunday, April 9th, " the enemy burnt a house and 
barn in the east part of the town" of Bridgewater. The 
Rev. James Keith, in a letter, dated April 17, 1676, describes 
the circumstances in the following words: "God hath now 
begun to pour out upon us the cup of treml.)ling; yet the 
Lord doth remember us still with mercy, yea very great 
mercy. 

"The 9th of this instant, being the Lord's Day, as we 
were assembling in the forenoon, we were alarmed by the 
shooting of some guns from some of our garrisons upon dis- 
covery of a house being on fire, which was Robert Latham's; 
his dwelling house and barn are wholly consumed. The 
house was deserted but a few days before. He had ccMisid- 
erable loss in liiml)er. The corn and chief of his goods were 
saved. Tliere were divers other out-houses rifled at the same 
time, ])ut no more bin'nt. Tliere was a horse, or two, kilknl ; 
three or four carried away; and some few swine killed. 

"We sent out a ])artv of men on the Lord's Day niglit 
upon discovery, who found their trackings. ( )ur men 
judged there might be about ten of llicm. T1k\\' followed 
them by their tracks several miles, but haxing no ])r()vision, 
they were forced to leave the ])nrsuit. We are in expecta- 
tion every day of an assault here. The Lord ])rei)are us for 
our trial." 



122 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

On Monday, April 17th, while the Rev. James Keith was 
writing the letter describing the enemy's appearance, ra- 
pacity, and vindictiveness in the town, a party of Indians 
burned the buildings at Marlborough, left undestroyed by 
those wreaking their enmity upon the inhabitants on the 
twenty-sixth of March. On Tuesday, April i8th, the sav- 
ages fell upon Sudbury, in an adjoining town, and burned a 
number of dwellings and barns, and killed several persons. 
Ten or twelve men who had gone there armed from Concord 
to succor the inhabitants "were drawn into an ambush and 
were all killed or taken " captives. " Near the end of April, 
Scituate, about thirty miles from Boston, on the bay, had 
nineteen houses and barns burned. The inhabitants mean- 
while made a gallant resistance, and finally put the enemy 
to flight." 

On Monday, the eighth of May, the town of Bridgewater 
was entered by a formidable body of savages, whose re- 
vengeful acts are summarized by a local historian as fol- 
lows: "About three hundred Indians, with Tispaquin for 
their leader, made another assault on the east end of the 
village on the south side of the [town] river, and set fire to 
many of the houses, but the inhabitants issuing from their 
garrison houses, fell upon them so resolutely, that the 
enemy were soon repelled ; and a heavy shower of rain fall- 
ing at the same time, the fires were soon extinguished. The 
attack was then renewed on the north side of the river, but 
it was soon defeated, and the next morning the enemy en- 
tirely disappeared, after having burnt two houses and one 
barn. 

" On these several occasions thirteen houses and four 
barns only were burnt, and but five of these were in the vil- 
lage ; the rest were on the borders of the settlement and 
deserted at the time. Excepting the garrison houses, it is 
said, every house but one in the town was burnt. These 
were probably the out dwellings only on the skirts and not 
in the village, where the houses were all in some measure 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND A^IERICA 123 

fortified. The house excepted is said to ha\'e been Nicholas 
Byram's, which was in the east, . . . and ([uite remote 
from the principal settlement." 

On Tuesday, the eleventh of May, sixteen houses and 
barns were burned by the enemy in the town of New Ply- 
mouth, and two days afterward nine more buildings. 
" Middleborough, thirty-eight miles from Boston, had its 
few remaining houses burned the same day." 

On Saturday, the twenty-ninth of July, Captain Thomas 
Hayward, Sergeant Samuel Packard, jimior, John Willis, 
and Isaac Harris went from the settlement to determine the 
truth of a re])ort that a l:)ody of Indians had been seen hos- 
tilely lurking in the vicinity of the town of Bridgewater. At 
some distance from the settlement, it is said, " they saw an 
Indian, which made them think the enem}^ was at hand; 
and they immediately pressed Comfort Willis and Josc])h 
Edson to go post " to Governor Winslow, at Marshfield, a 
few miles north of New Pb'mouth, which they did the same 
night. Governor Winslow went with them the next day to 
New Plymouth to order Captain Benjamin Church to go 
with his company of volunteers in search of the Indians. 
That officer, with some of his men, went with Comfort Wilhs 
and Joseph Edson the same day, which was Sunday, as far 
as Monponset Pond, and seeing no Indians, he returned to 
New Plymouth, promising to go with them on Monday, the 
last day of July, for a further search for the savages. There- 
U])on the two scouting couriers returned that night to the 
settlement with the message given them by Captain Church. 

On Monday, under the command of Ensign John Haw- 
ard (Howard), Samuel, Joseph, and Josiah Edson (the three 
sons of Deacon Samuel Edson), John, vSanuicl. and Thomas 
Washburn, John Field, Nicholas Byram, Samuel Allen. 
Samuel Allen, junior, John Gordon, John Hayward, John 
Packard, John Ames, Comfort Wilhs, Guido Bayley, Na- 
thaniel Hayward, jolm Whitman, and Sanuicl Leach, "went 
out, supposing to meet with Captain Churc-h. The}' came 



124 EDSONS IN ENCxLAND AND AMERICA 

upon the enemy, and fought with them, and took seven- 
teen of them ahve, and also much pkmder. And they all 
returned, and not one fell by the enemy, and received no 
help from [Captain] Church." 

While skirmishing with the Indians, the valorous volun- 
teers, it is said, killed a number of King Philip's "special 
friends," and the uncle of Philip, "who fell by his side." 
Had the Bridgewater men known that the famous chief was 
one of the savages with whom they were fighting, probably, 
as remarked by a writer, " Philip himself might have fallen, 
and the war thus have been brought to a more speedy and 
less disastrous result, but ' the cunning fox escaped them 
that time.' " 

" Captain Church joined them the next day, and pursued 
the enem}' till the third of August, when, ' ha\-ing no pro- 
vision but what they took from the foe, they hastened to 
Bridgewater, sending an express before to provide for them 
— their company being then very numerous — having killed 
and taken one hundred and seventy-three [Indians]. The 
gentlemen of Bridgewater met Captain Church with great 
expressions of honor, and thanks, and received him and his 
company with all due respect and kind treatment. ' ' ' The 
prisoners were confined that night in the town pound, and 
on the following day taken by Captain Church and his men 
to New Plymouth. 

Having learned that King Philip, with a band of trusty 
followers, had been driven to a swamp near Mount Hope, 
not far from the site of the city of Bristol in Rhode Island, 
a number of officers in command of companies of volunteers 
placed themselves and their men, on Saturday, August 12, 
1676, in advantageous ambuscades about the swamp for the 
purpose of killing or capturing the noted chief. On the 
firing of the first gun, the wary warrior, it is said, threw his 
" petunk' ' and powder-horn over his head and caught up his 
gun, and unwittingly ran toward one of the ambuscades, 
and was shot through the heart. As further related, "he 



EDSONS IX ENGLAND AND AMERICA 125 

fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under 
liim. 

The Rev. Cotton Mather commenting upon the good for- 
tune which fell to the inhabitants of the town of Bridge- 
water, while subject to their disc[uieting fears in this period 
of Indian hostilities, remarks: " Not an inhabitant was lost 
by this town during the war, neither young nor old; that 
when their dwellings were fired at this time, God, from 
heaven, fought for them with a storm of lightning, thunder, 
and rain, whereby a great part of their houses were pre- 
served." 

King Phili]3's wife and son having, as prisoners, fallen 
into the hands of the government of the colony, a question 
arose concerning the disposition to be made of them. It is 
said that the Rev. James Keith was written to for an ex- 
])ression of his opinion. In a letter to the Rev. John Cotton, 
he declared himself " in favor of mercy," a conclusion difter- 
ing from that of many other eminent men in the colony, 
and which "had," it is asserted, "great weight, if indeed it 
was not decisive on the occasion. The boy's hfe was spared, 
and with his mother, he was sent out of the cotmtry, and 
probably to the Bermudas." 

The calamitous character of the war awakened so ex- 
tensive a sympathy among the people of Ireland that they 
speedily forwarded a generous subscription to New England 
to succor the distressed inhabitants. On March 6, 1677, the 
General Court expressed its views respecting the proper 
apportionment of the gift of one hundred and twenty-four 
j)ounds and ten shillings among the towns ravaged by the 
Indians: "The order and destribution of this collonies 
])[ar]te of tlie contribution made by diners Christians in 
Ireland for the releiff of such as are impouerished, destressed, 
and in necessitie by the late Indian war, was, as it respects 
this collonie, proportioned as followeth [to the different 
towns]." The sum of seven pounds placed in the hands of 
"Elder Brett, Deacon Willis," and "Mr. Samuel Edson," 



126 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the Bridgewater committee appointed by the Court, was 
duly distributed by them among the sufferers by the war 
hving in the town.' 

In 1683, "the outermost mile of the ' original four-mile 
grant' " of the town's territory, or one mile all around the 
inner three miles circumjacent land, was divided into four 
tracts, one on each side of the town, and severally appor- 
tioned to the fifty-six proprietors [Samuel Edson and the 
Rev. James Keith being added to the original fifty-four], 
seventeen of whom were assigned the tract on the north 
side, fifteen that on the east, fourteen that on the west, and 
ten that on the south ; ai;id each group of proprietors being 
authorized to lay out its division in such a manner as 
should thereafter be determined by those belonging to it. 
The following record discloses the action taken to effect this 
division of the town land: 

" The purchasers being generally met together upon this 
24th of December, 1683, it was then proposed to them the 
laying out of [the several] great divisions of land to every 
purchaser [or proprietor] round the outside of the town in 
the four miles, or fourth mile from the centre and it was to 
be done by casting of lots for them. After some agitation 
about it, silence was desired, and this proposition was pub- 
licly and openly there propounded twice, and after proposal 
they were desired to declare their assent to it by their 
usual way of holding up their hands, which was done, and 
the major part, by many, did declare their assent to it. 

" The order of this division of land is: that it should be 
laid out a mile inward in breadth from the four miles square 

^ The History of the Great Indian War of i6y ^ and i6y6, commonly called 
Philip's War. Also, of the old French and Indian Wars, froni i6Sg, to I/04. 
By Thomas Church. With numerous notes and an appendix, by Samuel G. 
Drake. Revised edition. Cooperstown, 1846. Pp. iS, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 64. 
65, 109, 116, 117, 121, 122, 123. 

Records of the Colony of New Plymouth. Edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleflf, 
Boston, 1855. — Court Orders, vol. v., pp. 186, 223. — History of the Early Settle- 
ment of Bridgewater. Mitchell, Boston, 1840. Pp. 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 63. — First 
Book of the Records of the Town of Bridgewater, p. 71. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 127 

from the centre, and whatsoever ptirchaser in Bridgewater 
having any former lots of land laid out within this fourth 
mile should not be molested by this great division. Fur- 
ther, the order of this great division is : that there should be 
ten on the south side of the town, and fourteen on the west, 
and seventeen on the north, and fifteen on the east side; £ind 
every purchaser was to have his division of land as it fell to 
him by lot, the lots being drawn. Their names and lots are 
in the order as folio weth: 

" Those, whose lots fell out on the north, were to 
begin at the west, at the line betwixt Taunton (now [1840] 
Easton) and Bridgewater, and to run seven miles east in 
length, and one mile in breadth from the north line 
southward. 

" Names of the men of the north [side]. 
" Robert Latham, Mark Lathrop, 

Nicholas Byram, ) -, Guido Bayley, 

Nicholas Byram, j " Samuel Edson, jr., 

Joseph Alden, Giles Leach, 

William Bassett, Joseph Wadsworth, 

John Gary, Widow of (Samuel) Wadsworth, 

Joseph Ha3^ward, John Willis, jr., 

Mr. Nathaniel Wilhs, Widow (of John) Rol^bins. 

Samuel Packard, — 17 lots — 

" And from the extent of this seven miles of those on the 
north, those on the east are to begin on the north line, and 
to run a line due south till it meets with Mr. Alexander 
Standish's land, or Middleborough (now Halifax) l)ounds. 
All the lands lying easterly betwixt the above said line so 
run, and the line that was run by the agents of Bridgewater 
and Middlcl)or()Ugh (now Halifax), and the Major's ])ur- 
chase (now Hanson), l)cl()ngct]i to these hfteen men whose 
names and lots as they fell out arc in order as folio weth: — 

" The names of the men on the east [side]. 
"Nicholas Byram, jr., John Ames, 

John Hayward, Josiah Edson, 



128 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Ensign (John) Ha ward, Nathaniel Hayward, 

[Howard] John Washburn, ) , 
George Turner, John Washburn, ( 

Mr. (James) Keith, Widow (Samuel) Wadsworth, 

Samuel Packard, Nathaniel Packard. 

Benjamin Willis, — 15 lots — 

Edward Fobes, 
" And those fourteen on the west are to begin at the end 
of the mile in breadth at the north end, and to run along in 
the line betwixt Taunton (now Easton and Raynham), and 
Bridgewater, till it meet with a cove in the pond that cuts 
the line betwixt Taunton (now Raynham) and Bridge- 
water; and are to have a mile in breadth inward from the 
west line, as those have upon the north line, except it be 
against the great meadow. 

" Their lots and names are as foUoweth: — 
" Thomas Whitman, Widow Faxon, (formerly 

Samuel Allen, w[ife] of Thomas Gannett,) 

William Brett, William Snow, 

Jonathan Hill, William Orcutt, 

Thomas vSnell, Joseph Bassett, 

Deacon John Willis, Elisha Hayward, 

John Washburn, Deacon Samuel Edson. 

Joseph Wadsworth, 
" And the ten on the south are to begin at Taunton, (now 
Raynham) line, and to run east till it meet with the great 
river for length, and is to be a mile in breadth inward, as it 
is on the north. 

" Their names and lots, as they were drawn forth, are as 
folio weth : — 

" Isaac Harris, Lawrence Willis, 

John Whitman, John Washburn, 

Lieutenant (Thomas) Hay- Joseph Edson, 

ward, James Gary, 

Samuel Tompkins, John Field. 

Samuel Leonard, ■ — ten in all. — " 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 129 

" Of these persons, whose names are contained in these 
foin* divisions, it appears that Joliii Washburn at this time 
owned four lots, and of course four proprietary shares, 
Nicholas Byram two, Jose])h Wadsworth two, Widow 
Wadsworth two, and Samuel Packard two, all the rest one 
share each. They were all inhabitants of the town exce])t 
the Wadsworths, who retained their shares much longer than 
any of the non-residents, and were the last of the Duxbury 
proprietors to relinquish them. At this period forty-nine 
persons owned the entire original grant." 

The land purchased at Titicut from the Indians in 1672 
was ordered by a vote of the town to be divided into lots 
and apportioned to such householders and male children as 
were twenty years old and upward, then sixty-four in num- 
ber. They were to be recognized thereafter as proprietors 
and full i)urchasers of the said lots, but none were appor- 
tioned until 1685. 

In 1686, ten acres of woodland were voted to be laid out 
to each proprietor of the town, and as near to his habita- 
tion as the location of the land might permit. 

The proprietors of the town who, at that time, owned 
more than a single share in its lands, were Nicholas Byram, 
five shares; John Washburn, four; Samuel Edson, two (he 
having earlier had three, one of which he had, in 1673, 
transferred to his son Josiah) ; Samuel Packard, two; 
Thomas Hayward, two; Thomas Whitman, two; vSamuel 
Wadsworth, two; and Joseph Wadsworth, two.' 

Roads of advantageous grades, jjractically direct, and 
properly bridged, were early regarded as necessary for 
facilitating the passage of pco])lc, live stock, and vehicles 
from one point of the town to the other, as well as to des- 
tinations beyond its boundaries. The laying out of such 
roads as were most needed was undertaken shortly after the 
incorporation of the town. "A way towards Plymoutli," 



^History of the Early Settlement of Bridgcwatcr. -Mitchell, Boston, 1S40. 
Pp. 29, 30, 31, 32, T,T„ 34, 65. 



I30 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

one "towards Boston," and one "to Taunton" were pro- 
jected in 1667. 

The same year a jury was ordered to layout "a way to 
the great meadows, viz : to come from out of Taunton way 
at the head of Edward Fobes' six acre lot — so to the head 
of Samuel Edson's six acre lots to William Snow's — then 
between said Edson's and Snow's lands to the common — 
then to the river. ' ' 

In 1690, another order specified "a way" to be laid out 
"from John Aldrich's to the corner of Goodman Edson's 
field, where it meets with the way that comes from the 
town: the way is to be where it's beaten." 

That year "a way from Goodman Bayley's farm and 
South Brook" was "agreed upon, viz: the way now goes 
from South Brook to Samuel Washburn's, where the way 
now is, it runs on the north side of the barn to a tree where 
it meets with a way that comes from South Brook below 
Goodman Ames' meadow, where the way goes over the 
brook to the said tree — and thence to a white oak — thence 
in the way over a small run — thence to John Leonard's 
house — thence with the way to Samuel Edson's land, and 
down on Comfort Willis' land, and across Samuel Edson's 
land to John Willis' land — then to a wild cherry tree^ 
then to a rock near the outside of John Willis' land — then 
through Samuel Edson's land to marked trees — and then to 
town." 

About the year 1683, the proprietors of the town voted 
" one aker for a burying place" on the east side of Taunton 
Road, leading from Town River southwardly to Mile- Brook 
bridge, now titled South Street. About 1840, the original 
plot of ground " was enlarged by an addition of land on the 
north and east sides, making it nearly a triangular lot, com- 
prising " one acre, one quarter and eleven rods of land. " It 
is said that " Deacon Edward Fobes, son of John Fobes, an 
original proprietor, then [in 1681] lived where Dwelly Fobes 
now [in 1882] lives and owned two house or garden lots, 



EDSONS IN ENGLx\ND AND AMERICA 131 

24 X 80, twelve acres, bounded west by Samuel Edson and 
east by the road to Taunton, being the ])resent [1882] road by 
his house and the bur^dng-place. " "Opposite the dwelling 
house of [the] said Edward Fobes," were the two house-lots, 
24x80, "owned, occupied, and lived upon by John Gary, 
junior, son of the old and first town-clerk." ' 

The fifth of the eight children of Samuel and Susanna 
Orcutt Edson to marry, was Mary, their fourth daughter, 
who, in 1676, became the spouse of Nicholas, son of Nich- 
olas and Susanna Shaw Byram. Bethiah, their fifth and 
youngest daughter, and latest-born child, married, on Decem- 
ber 17, 1676, Ezra, son of Walter and Eleanor Strong Dean. 
Samuel, their eldest son, took, in 1678, for his wife, Susanna, 
the sister of Nicholas Byram, who was the husband of his 
sister Mary. Joseph, their second son, wedded, in 1678, 
Experience Field of Rhode Island, who died in 1685, and 
he married, in the following year, Mary, daughter of George 
Turner of the town of Bridgewater. 

On July ig, 1692, Samuel Edson calmly terminated his 
earthly career of four score years; one half of which space 
of time had been passed by him in the town of Bridgewater. 
His widow, then in the seventy-fourth year of her age, and 
all the children born to them (the youngest being forty 
years old), followed his remains, a few days later, to the 
burial-ground east of the Taunton Road, an eighth of a 
mile distant southeasterly from the homestead that com- 
manded a view northeastwardly of most of the dwellings 
forming the settlement along the banks of the Town River. 

Assuming that his mortal life could not ha\'c much 
longer continuance, Samuel Edson prudently made a will in 
which he expressed in the following brief and ex])licit way 
the evidence of his affection for his aged consort and surviv- 
ing offspring: 

' History of the liarly Settlement of Bridgewater. Milcholl, Boston, 1S40. 
Pp. 69, 70, 71, 72. — Epitaphs in Old Bridgewater, Massachusetts. By Williams 
I-athani. Illustrated witli Plans and Views. Bridgewater, Mass., 1S82. Pp. 
I, 2, 4- 



132 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" This fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord 
one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight or eighty-nine, 
I, Samuel Edson, sen., Inhabitant of the Town of Bridge- 
water, in the county of Phmouth, in New England, Being of 
perfect understanding and memory, Praysed be God for the 
same, do make and declare my last Will and Testament in 
maner and forme following: 

" Having already disposed of moste of my Lands and a 
Great part of my estate to my children as By their Deeds 
doth appear, I do now Will and Bequeath to my eldest son, 
Samuel Edson, my ffowling piece, and to my other two 
sons, Joseph Edson and Josiah Edson, my musket, sword, 
and Bandaleers. 

" Item. I Give and Bequeath to my three sons, Samuel 
Edson, Joseph Edson, and Josiah Edson, to each of them, 
a draught chaine and also a Logg-chain, and all my wearing 
cloaths to be divided among them. 

" Item. I Give and bequeath to my Loving Wife, Su- 
sanna Edson, all the rest of my estate. Both Personal and 
reall, housing. Lands, chattels, cash, all within doors and 
without, whatsoever I have not otherwise disposed of, to be 
wholly at her dispose during her naturall Life, and what is 
Left at her decease and mine, either Housing, lands, chattels, 
or cash, all without doorss, to be equally divided among my 
three sons, Samuel Edson, Joseph Edson, and Josiah Edson, 
their heirs and Assigns. And all within doorss, all my 
household Goods and cash to be equally divided among my 
five daughters, Elizabeth, Susanna, Sarah, Mary, and 
Bethiah, their heirs and assigns. And I do hereby nomi- 
nate and appoint my Loving Wife, Susanna Edson, to be 
my executrix and my son Samuel Edson and my son Josiah 
Edson to be Joyned with her as executors of this my last 
Will and Testament. And I do further Will and desire Mr. 
James Keith, John Kingman, seni", and Thomas Snell of 
Bridgewater to be overseers of this my Last Will and 
Testament to see it faithfully performed, hereby appoint- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 133 

ing my executrix and my executors above mentioned to 

receive all ni}' just debts and to pay whatever I owe any 

p[er]son, discharging my funeral's [expenses]. 

"In witness whereof I, the abovesaid Samuel Edson, 

sen'', have hereunto set my hand and seal the day and year 

above written. 

"Samuel Edson, serf, (seal)." 

" Readd, signed, sealed. Published 
" and declared to be his Last 
" Will and Testament in the 
" Presence of us. Witnesses: 
" John ffield, 
" John Ames, 
"Samuel Kinsley." 

"John Ames and Samuel Kinsley, two of the Witnesses 
here named made oath before the Court at Plimouth, Sep- 
tember ye 20th, 1692, that they were present and saw the 
above named Samuel Edson, serf, now deceased, sign, seal, 
and heard him declare the above- written to l)e his last Will 
and Testament. And that, to the best of their judgment, 
he was of sound mind and memory w^hen he did the s^mie. 

"Attest: Sam"- Sprague, Clerk."' 

The father's bequest of his "ffowling piece" to his son 
Samuel was in conformity with an ancient English custom 
that specialized a father's love for his eldest son, who by 
primogeniture was commonly made the recipient of a ])ar- 
ticular keepsake. The use of two small f 's in spelling fowl- 
ing instead of a capital F was also in keeping with an ancient 
practice, as is evidenced in the writing of such proper 
names as France, " iTrance"; and as has ])een seen in a ])re- 
ceding ([notation of an entry in the Town Book of Salem, 
where the surname Flagg is written "fflagge." 

Tokens of remembrance, as shown by tlie will, were 
bequeathed the other two sons — one receiving his father's 

^Registry of Wills. Book i., p. 143. Oflicc of I'roliato, I'l^-mouth, Mas- 
sachusetts. 



134 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

musket and a bandoleer (a broad piece of leather worn over 
the right shoulder and passing under the left arm to support 
the musket when priming it with the right hand) ; the 
other son, his father's sword, and a bandoleer, to which the 
scabbard was attached. 

The drawing of heavy loads of stone or other material 
in winter on sledges by oxen, or of long and cumbrous 
pieces of timber bound together with log-chains, necessi- 
tated at that day the use of a draught-chain, which was con- 
sidered an invaluable possession by the pioneer farmers of 
New England. The chains bequeathed by Samuel Edson 
to his sons were probably made in England and imported 
by him for use on his different farms. 

Ten days after his death, an inventory was taken of his 
household goods, farming implements, and other property, 
of which the following instrument of writing exhibits the 
appraised value: 

"The Inventory of Samuel Edson, sen'', who deceased 
the 19th day of July, 1692, is as followeth: 

£. s. d. 

" Imp''^ One bed and ffurniture to it 7 00 oc 

Six paire of sheets 2 00 00 

Twenty six yards of Linnen cloth, i 16 00 

Twenty eight napkins and a Tablecloth, i 01 08 

One Bed, sheets and coverings, 2 05 00 

One Bed more, Boulster, sheets & coverings, . . 5 00 00 

One Bed more, sheets and coverings, i 15 00 

Three coverlets, one Rugg, and Blankets, ) 

^^ h .... 5 17 00 

Woolen cloth, twenty nine yards, ) 

more and Bed, i 00 00 

Cushings, half a coverlet, and chests, o 13 00 

Brass vessels and Iron, 2 11 00 

Pewter vessels and Iron 3 10 00 

Wooden, earth, and tin vessels, i 10 00 

Books, and Arme chaires and stooles 2 14 00 

Wheels, Wool, Woolen and Linnen yarn 2 16 00 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 135 

In wearing cloaths 10 00 00 

Saddle, Brydle, Pillion, and cloath, & iron 

tooles, I 14 00 

In silver money, 30 00 00 

In house and Land 50 00 00 

Cows, mare, sheep and swine, 9 00 00 

Debts and dues from se\'eral persons 6 12 00 

Sum totall is 148 14 08 

" And taken this 29th of Jul)-, j 692 : By Samuel Allin, sen^, 

"and l)y William Brett. 

" Samuel Edson and Josiah Edson, the sons of sd. de- 
ceased, made oath Before the Court at Plimouth, September 
20th, 1692, that the above written is a true Inventory of 
the estate of their said ffather, Samuel Edson, deceased, so 
far as they know, and if more shall l)e discovered to them, 
they will make it known. 

"Attest: Saml. Sprague, Clerk."' 

Some of the items of the inventory bear unequivocal 
testimony to the industry of the capable mother and d uigh- 
ters. The entry : " Wheels, Wool, Woolen and Linnen vdrn, " 
is clearly significant of the fre([uent use made f)y them of 
the spinning-wheel, then a necessary possession of e\'ery 
thrifty New England household. The mention of " Woolen 
and Linnen yarn," coupled with the item of "Twenty-six 
yards of Linnen cloth," and that of " Woollen cloth, twenty- 
nine yards," further suggests their knowledge of the art of 
weaving yarn into clotli, in order to jn'ovide the family with 
wearing £ipparel, bed sheets, coverings, and tal)le linen. 

While the ])ossession of " twenty-eight napkins" may be 
regarded as indicative of the refinement of the family, the 
fact must not be forgotten that tal)lc knixes and forks were 
not then in common use in the Colony of New Plx'mouth, 
and that the inhaljitants at that time were conveying food 

^ Rei^isiry of Wills. Book i., pp. 143, 144. Oflice nf Probate, Plymouth, 
Massachusetts. 



136 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

to their mouths either with pewter or wooden spoons, or 
with their fingers; which last-mentioned custom necessi- 
tated the use by well-bred people of napkins. It was not 
until about the close of the seventeenth century that two- 
tined iron or silver table-forks began to be used by the 
wealthy colonists of New England. It is said that Governor 
John Winthrop had, in 1633, the first table-fork brought to 
America, which was then considered a possession so rare and 
valuable that it was kept in a leather case. 

The itemed " Saddle, Brydle, Pillion, and cloath" attests 
the fact that the male members of the family not only 
rode on horseback, but also the female, who, in riding 
double with one of the male members, sat behind on the 
pillion, a broad pad attached to the saddle and stuffed 
commonly with such soft substances as hair, wool, or 
straw. 

Susanna Orcutt Edson survived her husband six 
years and seven months, and died, on February 20, 1699, 
aged one-and-eighty years. Her remains, as his, were 
interred in the burial-ground on the east side of the 
Taunton Road, south of the northernmost reach of the 
Town River. 

Their graves have for many years been marked by a 
dark granite slab, five feet seven inches long, four feet 
three inches wide, and five inches thick, resting on a foun- 
dation of natural broken stone, rising one and a half feet 
above the surface of the ground about it. Lengthwise 
on the slab is a quaintly-lettered inscription, somewhat 
obliterated by the defacing action of rain, frost, ice, and 
snow. 

The date of Samuel Edson 's death was evidently erro- 
neously inscribed, as is confirmed by the information set 
forth by the introductory line of the inventory of his estate, 
which discloses it in the words: "Samuel Edson, serf, who 
deceased the 19th day of July, 1692." 

As indicated by the condition of the white marble head- 




EDSON'TOMB 






INSCRIPTION ON ED SON MONUMENT, 




KEITH' TOMB 



n' 



138 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



stone now standing in front of the antique tomb, this last 
token of remembrance was erected not many years ago/ 

Samuel Edson, the recognized progenitor of the Edsons 
in America, was a man of excellent characteristics, of un- 
blemished reputation, and notably enterprising. It is his- 
torically evident that he was in every sense of the term a 
man of affairs. 

In 1667, 1670, 1672, 1674, and 1680, he served as a jury- 




TOMB OF DEACON SAMUEL AND SUSANNA ORCUTT EDSON IN OLD GRAVEYARD 
AT WEST BRIDGEWATER MASS. NEAR IT THAT OF JAMES KEITH 



man on important court trials at New Pl3^mouth, the seat 
of government of the Colony of New Plymouth. From 
April 2, 1667, to the end of King Philip's War, he was an 
active member of the Bridgewater Council of War. In 
1672, he was chosen one of the two surveyors of highways 
serving that year the town of Bridgewater. On October 
31, and on November i, 1676, as a deputy from the town, 

^Epitaphs in Old Bridgewater, Massachuseits. By Williams Latham. 
Illustrated with Plans and Views. Bridgewater, 1882. Pp. 18, 19. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 139 

he was in attendance at the General Court, in session at New 
Plvmotith. He was elected one of the selectmen of the town 

■J 

and acceptably performed the diverse duties of the office 
in 1676, 1677, 1678, 1679, 1681, 1682, 1684, 1685. and 1686. 
A strong individuality made him capable to meet with 
fortitude the trials and hardshi]js incident to the life of a 
pioneer settler. The s])irit of his patience seldom permit- 
ted his mind to sink into states of despondency of any long 
continuance, nor did his sanguine temperament often priv- 
ilege any stroke of adversity to weaken his energies while 
uncontrollable circumstances deferred the accomplishment 
of an advantageous undertaking. Stern and resolute, he 
was also magnanimous. He readily forgave injuries done 
him by ignorant people, nor did any stress of temper unfit 
him for a discriminating valuation of the opinion of those 
upholding a matter contrary to his view of it. His argu- 
ments were forcibly presented, and when called upon to 
give his opinion regarding a cjuestion of ])ul)]ic concern, he 
usually spoke with great deliberation, using plain but cogent 
language. His advice was not infrequently sought in the 
adjustment of differences arising between neighbors. His 
counsels to young men were never egotistically consequen- 
tial. His daily fellowship with men with whom he was 
long intimate was distinguished by numl)erless evidences of 
an enduring solicitude for their welfare. His ])ersonal in- 
tegrity was beyond reproach. He faithfuU}' served as a 
deacon the church of which he was an influential and ex- 
emplary member. His education was in kee])ing with the 
general attainments of the intelligent! \' and ])rudently 
reared sons of the English }'eomcn of his day. The forty 
years of his sctlk'nient in the town of Bridgewater had im- 
pressively disclosed his indi\-i(hial worth and \irtuos to the 
contemporary inhabitants of the settlement, who just!}- 
admired and esteemed him. 

He was a strong and robust man, nearly six feet in 
height, with facial lineaments indicating an indomitable 



I40 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

will which fitted him to meet the trying responsibilities of 
a settler with supreme courage, and a ready adaptability to 
endure the various hardships incident to the life of a pioneer. 

Susanna Orcutt Edson as a wife was a generous giver 
of sympathy and encouragement; as a housekeeper, not- 
ably cheerful, frugal, and industrious; as a mother, joyously 
affectionate, admirably discreet, and religiously devout. 
She had a commanding presence and a graceful art of win- 
ning the admiration of all with whom she associated. Her 
daughters inherited her happy disposition and modesty of 
deportment. They, as she, had a charm of manner and a 
dignity of deportment that attracted attention and made 
them socially distinguished. Many of the traits of the 
father and the mother descended as heritages to the three 
sons, who were similarly self-reliant and practical, social, 
and frugal. 

The cycle of time compassing the two score years spent 
in the town of Bridgewater by Samuel Edson cannot but 
be recognized as the foundation-period of its history. The 
following noteworthy remarks from Increase and Cotton 
Mather, (the writers of the first preface of Bridgewater' s 
Monitor, the title of the sermon preached by the Rev. 
James Keith on June 14, 171 7, at the dedication of the 
first meeting-house erected in the south parish of the town,) 
pertinently portray the religious character of the inhabi- 
tants of the town at that time: 

" The New English Bridgewater has been a town fa- 
vored of God; yea, some favors of Heaven unto it, have 
been distinguishing. 

"It was planted a noble vine. — And may no more of the 
text from whence this phrase is borrowed, ever be applied 
unto it! The first planters of it were a set of people who 
made religion their main interest; and it became their 
glory. There was a time when it stood in a land of un- 
walled villages, with fierce armies of bloody Indians destroy- 
ing round about them; and the dispensations of God, our 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 141 

saviour, towards it at this time, were so wonderful, that the 
short report thereof, given in the Church History of New Eng- 
land, is not unworthy to be here transcribed and repeated. 

" ' Remarkable was the fate of Bridge water, a most pray- 
ing and a most pious town, seated in the very midst of the 
dangers of the war; that although they were often assaulted 
by formidable numbers of their enemies, yet in all their sharp 
assaults they never lost one of their inhabitants, young or 
old. They were solicited strongly to desert their dwell- 
ings, but they resolved that they would keep their stations. 
And now, on May 8th, 1676, the Indians began to fire the 
town, but the inhabitants with notable courage issued forth 
from their garrisons to fight the enemy; and God from 
Heaven at the same time fought for them, with a storm of 
lightning, thunder, and rain, whereby a considerable part of 
their houses were preserved. Thou, Church of Bridgewater! 

"'0 nimium dilccta Deo, cut militat cether ! ' — 'O, how 
beloved of Heaven, whom storms defend!' One that was 
no Christian, so sang the favors of Heaven to the Emperor 
Theodosius, and so might the Pagan foe now sing of thy 
salvation ! 

"Ever since that memorable day the town has been 
proceeding, with the smile of God upon them and upon the 
intentions of his gospel among them, until they are now 
become two bands. 

" It has been a singular felicity unto this good people, 
that from the very infancy of their plantation, they have 
sat under the ministry of that gracious, faithful, humble 
servant of God, who continues with them to this day. He 
has been a precious gift of our ascended Lord unto them; 
and they have hitherto rejoiced in his light; and we rejoice 
with them, that after fifty-four years, his light yet shines 
with such brightness among them. " ' 

' A Genealogical Accoutit of the Edsons, early settled in Bridgewater, with 
Appendices. Lowell, 1864. Pp. 4, 5, 6, 7, S, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; Appendix No. i. 
p. X. — History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater. Mitchell, Boston, 1840. 
Appendix, pp. 395, 396. 



Chapter V 
Samuel Edson, second, of Bridgewater 

1651-1719 

THE accession of James the Second, in 1685, was fol- 
lowed by events that in a great measure changed 
the former course of affairs, both in England and the 
American colonies. The evident purpose of the reckless 
monarch to afford the Roman Catholics in his realm 
more liberty in matters of faith and ritual, caused those 
of his subjects, who were adherents of the Church of 
England, to take steps to release themselves from the 
fear of being dispossessed of the ecclesiastical rights and 
im.munities which they had been enjoying. In brief, a 
revolution was inaugurated in England for the king's de- 
thronement. 

William, Prince of Orange, the popular Stadtholder of 
the United Netherlands, having been petitioned to come 
to England and assist the urgent revolutionists in main- 
taining the supremacy of the Protestant religion, landed 
at Torbay, in Devonshire, on November 5, 1688. Many 
men of rank and martial distinction soon placed them- 
selves under his leadership, and King James, fearful of be- 
coming a prisoner, fled, in December, to France, where he 
claimed the protection of Louis the Fourteenth, an ardent 
Papist. 

The settlers of New England, having been dominated 
for many years by a growing desire to continue in the 
enjoyment of their religious liberty untrammelled by hier- 

142 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 143 

archical restrictions, were greatly alarmed by the reported 
Roman Catholic favoritism of King James the Second. 
The intelligence of the Dutch Prince's landing in England, 
and of the marshalling of a formidable army of Protestants 
under his banner, largely abated their immediate appre- 
hensions of a loss of their religious liberty. Nevertheless, a 
body of the citizens of Boston, moved by a dee])ening im- 
pression that Sir Edmund Andros, then governor of New 
England, by commission of King James, might clandes- 
tinely undertake, with the help of the French Romanists 
of Canada, to bring them into subjection to Louis the 
Fourteenth, in order to secure to France the fur trade of 
the Massachusetts Indians and other neighboring tribes, as 
well as the traffic of the colonies, and also for the further- 
ance of the Roman Catholic religion in New England, sent 
on A|)ril 18, 1689, representatives to the English Gover- 
nor to demand the relin([uishment of the office held by 
him. The contem])tuous manner with which he declined 
to accede to the request so exasperated the excited people 
that they forthwith put him in prison to debar him from 
exercising the power with which he had been vested by 
King James as governor. A committee of safety was 
thereupon elected and intrusted with the preservation of 
the ])eace, being allowed the use of such means as would 
insure the protection of life and ]^r()]^erty until orders should 
be received from England, 1)\' the institution of a form of 
government sanctioned by the government consequent 
upon the results of the revolution. 

The news of the elevation of Prince William of Or- 
ange and the Princess Mary to the throne of England, on 
February 13, 1689, reached New England in June, when it 
was also learned tliat the order of the Pri\-_\- Council for 
proclaiming the King and Ouecn in the ]»lanlations, is- 
sued on Februar\- 19, (Hd not include New England, which 
"was passed over, the fin-llier consideration being res]:)ited 
until the business of taking away the c-harter there" should 



144 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

be determined. The new charter, granted on October 7, 
1 69 1, gave a wide geographical distinction to the name 
of New England, which then became "a province called 
Massachusetts Bay, comprehending the old colonies of 
Massachusetts and Plymouth, and the territories of Maine 
and Nova Scotia, with all lands lying between the two last- 
named jurisdictions. Thus, except for the little interrup- 
tion at the mouth of the Piscataqua, the coast line of 
Massachusetts as now constituted extended from Martha's 
Vineyard and Nantucket at the south to the mouth of 
the St. Lawrence at the north, while, with the exception 
of a narrow strip along the Hudson, recognized as belong- 
ing to New York, her territory reached westward to the 
Pacific Ocean. ' ' 

" The charter provided that there should be a governor, 
lieutenant-governor, and secretary, to be appointed from 
time to time by the king. There was to be a legislature 
or general court in two branches ; namely a house of repre- 
sentatives, chosen as heretofore, annually by the towns, 
and a council consisting of twenty-eight members, to be 
selected in the first instance by the king, and afterwards, 
from year to year, on the last Wednesday in May, by the 
General Court, subject to the governor's refusal. Eight- 
een, at least, of the counsellors were to be inhabitants or 
landholders in Massachusetts proper, four in what had 
been Plymouth colony, three in Maine, and one in the 
country between the Kennebec and Nova Scotia; and 
seven were to be a quorum. It was required of the rep- 
resentatives to be freeholders, and each town for the 
present was to have two representatives and no more; 
but this arrangement was made subject to be changed 
by law. 

" The governor was to be commander-in-chief of the 
militia, and to appoint military officers. He was also, 
with the consent of the cotmcil, to appoint judges and all 
other officers connected with the courts. The General 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 145 

Court was to constitute judicial courts (exce])t courts of 
admiralty, wliich were reserved for the jurisdiction of the 
crow^n, and except probate courts, which were to be con- 
stituted by the governor in council) ; to appoint, with the 
governor's concurrence, all ofificers, besides such as were 
military or judicial; and to levy taxes on all proprietors 
and inhal)itants. A general court was to come together 
on the last Wednesday in May of every year, and at other 
times when summoned by the governor, who might also 
adjourn, prorogue, or dissolve it. 

"A great step was, that the religious element was elimi- 
nated from the government; the qualification of a voter 
was no longer to be membership of a church, but the pos- 
session of a freehold worth two pounds sterling a year, or of 
personal property to the amount of forty pounds sterling. 
I iberty of conscience and of worship was secured to all 
Protestants; and it was ])rovided that, in litigated civil 
cases not affecting real estate, appeals might be made from 
the courts to the King in council, when the amount in con- 
troversy exceeded three hundred pounds. Natives and in- 
habitants of the province w^ere to enjoy 'all liberties and 
immunities of free and natural subjects ' ... as if 
they were born wnthin the realm of England. 

" The province of Massachusetts Bay, as now consti- 
tuted, may have contained sixty thousand inhabitants. 
These were distributed in seventy-five towns, seventeen 
of which belonged to Plymouth; and the number of Con- 
gregational churches was nearly the same, almost all the 
churches having one minister, and some being served by 
two. Boston had not far from seven thousand inhab- 
itants, being much the most considerable place on the 
continent. Other principal commercial and fishing towns 
were Salem, Charlestown, I])swich, Newburg, and Ply- 
mouth. 

"With the revolution whicli seated the Prince of Or- 
ange on the English throne, the commercial interest in 



146 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

England obtained new importance, and the colonial sys- 
tem was vigorously developed. The colonial empire of 
England, now so vast, at that time comprehended not very 
much more than the settlements on the eastern seaboard 
of North America between Florida and Newfoundland, 
and a few islands of the West Indies, though already there 
were factories and forts on the Spanish Main, on the Gold 
Coast of Africa, and on both sides of the peninsula of 
Hindostan. " 

The purpose of England to derive all possible advan- 
tages from her American colonies, even in their very in- 
fancy, is clearly established. The "Act for Increase of 
Shipping and Encouragement of Navigation," known as 
the "First Navigation Law," besides prohibiting, in 1651, 
the colonies from shipping their goods in vessels of other 
nations, also precluded them from bargaining "for freight 
wherever it could be had on the most favorable terms. ' ' 

" From regulating the carrying trade, the legislation of 
Charles the Second passed to regulating the destination of 
the cargoes. By an act of the first year [1660] after his 
restoration, the colonial produce could be carried nowhere 
else till it had first been landed in England ; in other words, 
the colonial producer was obliged to sell his property on 
such terms as he could get from the native Englishman, or 
else to charge himself with a double freight, and with port 
dues and other expenses for entry and clearance in England. 

" From thus compelling the colonists to sell in England 
the next step was to compel them to buy from that coun- 
try which was done [in 1663] by another law forbidding 
importations into the colonies of ' any commodity of the 
growth, production, or manufacture of Europe,' except 
from ' England, Wales, or Berwick-upon-Tweed, ' and in 
vessels built in England. To a strict execution of these 
laws the colonial governors were bound by their official 
oath, and the local revenue officers appointed in England 
for the colonies had all the same powers as in the pa- 



•i 



ilk 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 147 

rent country. The cu])iclity of the hindholdcr was stimu- 
lated by that of the merchant. An apprehension arose 
that the industry of the colonial grazier and weaver would 
' sink the value of English land, ' and an act of Parliament 
in one of the last years [1699] of King William forbade the 
loading ' in any ship or vessel, ' or ' U]xm any horse, cart, 
or other carriage,' of 'any wool, or manufacture made or 
mixed with wool, being the produce or manufacture of any 
of the English plantations in America, ' to be conveyed ' to 
any other of the said plantations, or to any other place 
whatsoever ' " ' 

Samuel, the eldest son of Samuel and Susanna Orcutt 
Edson, born in the town of Salem, in the colony of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, in 1645, had, at the time of the death of his 
father, been an inhabitant of the town of Bridgewater 
seven-and-fort3"-years. The fact that he had considerable 
executive ability, was afhrmed by his appointment, on June 
3, 1673, as the town's constable. That he was naturally en- 
dowed with courage equal to that of his two brothers, 
Joseph and Josiah, seems attested by the incidents of his 
and their association with eighteen other hardy sons of 
Bridgewater settlers, who, on Monday, August i, 1676, 
having discovered a formidable body of Indian warriors 
skulking along the borders of the settlement, unhesitatingly 
attacked the hostile V)and, killing a number of the sur- 
prised savages, capturing seventeen and recovering n large 
([uantity of ])lundered property. Afterward, being joined 
by a comj)any of volunteers, the}' pursued the fleeing 
enemy until the following Wednesday, when, being in want 
of provisions, they returned to the settlement, having 
killed and captured one hundred and seventy-three of the 
bloodthirsty warriors wliom King Phih"]) had incited to 



' A Compendious History of New England from the Discovery by Europeans 
ti' tlic First General Congress of the Anglo-American Colonies. By J(ihn Gorham 
Palfrey. Boston and New York, 1883. Vol, iii., pp. 13, 14, 15, 16. 54, 55, 71, 
72, 73. 8i- 



148 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

take up arms against the colonists of New England. The 
importance of this extraordinary achievement was ren- 
dered still more remarkable by the fact that all the valor- 
ous volunteers returned to their homes unhurt. 

In 1678, Samuel Edson, second, was united by marriage 
to Susanna, the fourth daughter of Nicholas and Susanna 
Shaw Byram, born, in 1648, in the town of Weymouth, in 
the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Her father, son of a 
gentleman of the county of Kent, England, who shortly 
after the birth of Nicholas changed his residence to Ire- 
land, was sent, when sixteen years of age, in charge of a 
man, to visit certain relatives in England. The person 
having him under his care on the way to their destination 
robbed the boy of his money and then placed him on board 
a ship sailing to the West Indies. On arriving there, he was 
sold by the captain of the vessel to obtain the amount of 
money requisite for the payment of the lad's passage. On 
the expiration of the term of his temporary bondage, 
Nicholas Byram secured passage on a ship clearing for New 
England. He settled in the town of Weymouth, but hear- 
ing of the agricultural advantages which the town of Bridge- 
water afforded, he bought, in 1660, the rights of three 
proprietors or holders of shares in the town lands, and 
thereupon became an inhabitant of the prospering town. 

The gift of a proprietary share in the town lands and of 
forty acres of an acquired tract, which Deacon Edson pre- 
sented his son Samuel on the eve of his marriage to Susanna 
Byram, included the site of the house in which his son 
Samuel's two daughters and son were reared. According 
to present landmarks, it is now the seat of a modern two- 
story frame dwelling near the southwest corner of Colum- 
bus Avenue and Keenan Street, a short distance west of 
the electric railway running through Bridgewater, and West 
Bridge water from Taunton to Brockton, and about one and 
a quarter miles southeast of the monument in the Square 
at West Bridgewater. The rudely- cc'vered well from which 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 149 

water is still drawn by a windlass, is a prominent object in 
the foreground of the one-story wooden building, once the 
kitchen of the old homestead. 

The high esteem in which the freeholders and ])roperty- 
possessing electors of Bridgewater held Samuel Edson, 
second, as a townsman, caused them, in the years 1697 and 
1 7 13, to send him as their representative to the General 
Court at Boston. They also elected him in the years 1709, 
1 71 2, and 1 7 19 one of the town's selectmen. 

Susanna, his eldest daughter, at the age of twenty years, 
married John, the eldest son of John and Sarah Mitchell 
Hayward, and, seven years later, Elihu, the only son of 
Elihu and Ann Brett. Elizabeth, his second child, 1^e- 
came, on May 24, 1705, the wife of Samuel, the eldest 
son of Samuel and Elizabeth Lathrop Packard. Samuel, 
his only son, at the age of eighteen, wedded Mary, the 
fourth child and the third daughter of Benjamin and Sarah 
Williams Dean, of the town of Taunton. 

Perceiving that the end of his life on earth was near, 
"Samuel Edson, of Bridgewater, in the County of Ply- 
mouth, in New England, yeoman," on March 16, 1719, 
twenty-five days before his decease, made his last will and 
testament, containing the following bequests : 

" Item. I give unto m\' beloved wife Susanna, Sixty 
pounds in Silver money, . . . also all my moveables, 
and the Improvement [use] of One half of my 
homestead or Home living during her Life, and the Im- 
provement of my negro man George and ni}' negro woman 
Sarah, during her natural life. 

"Item. I iih'c unto m\- grandson, Sanuicl Packard 
one hundred acres of Land Ix'ing at a place called 
Pochaug neck, in Bridgewater, . . . also five or six 
Small Titicut Lots adjoining the said hundred acres, 
a lot of meadow lying at a ])laee called Calling 
Cove, . . . also the oni' half of lix'e hundred acres 
of Land that I haxe in the colony of Connecticut, 



I50 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

also one half of halfe a share of Cedar Swamp, in the West 
Cedar Swamp. 

" Item. I give unto my Two Grandsons, Paul and Job 
Packard . . . Two Lotts of Land, neare to the Land 
of Josiah Washbourn, in Bridgewater, containing by esti- 
mation One Hundred & fifty acres more or less, 
also Ten pounds in Silver money. 

" Item. I give unto my Granddaughter Bethiah Pack- 
ard Twenty Pounds in Silver money. 

" Item. I give unto my daughter Susanna Brett . . . 
a Ten acre Lott of Land near to the land whereon now 
she dwelleth, . . . also a small Lot of Land lying at 
the stead [place] of their Lands, . . . also a Lot of 
Land lying near the lands of Richard Jennings containing 
by estimation, seventy-five acres, . . . and about 
twenty-four acres nigh to the lands of John Kingman, 
. also the one-half of a five hundred acre Right of 
Lands I have in the colony of Connecticut, . . . one 
hundred and twenty pounds in money, partly paper and 
partly silver. 

" Item. I give unto my son Samuel Edson, whom I 
appoint executor ... all my Homestead or Home 
living, the one-half at my decease, the other half at my 
wife's decease, . . . and all my other lands, 
also one hundred pounds in silver money partly and partly 
paper towards bringing up his son Samuel to the Col- 
ledge, ..." 

The will, it appears, was not probated until February 
I, 1720. An appraisement of his household goods, farm- 
ing implements, and other personal property was made, as 
is disclosed by 

"An Inventory of the personal estate of Mr. Samuel 
Edson of Bridgewater, in the county of Plymouth, who 
deceased April 10, 17 19. 

" Impr"'^ In silver money at 17*^ weight .... ^178 15 7 
" Item. In Cattle, Horses, Sheep, &c., .... 70 03 o 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



151 



"Item. In ploughs & plow Irons 

" In Iron vessells 

In Wooden " as Tubs, &c 

" In pewter ;!{^i S.16 Item. In vSil- 

ver sjKjons £2 s.^ 

"In Alquamy spoons 1/ Item. In Bookes 

'm/ 

" Item. In Trammels, pothooks, fire sho\'ell, 

&c., 

" In Axes, adse & auger & Ham- 
mer 

" Two Cart boxes, hoop cops, a 

sled, an Iron tooth Harrow, 

ox yoaks, Grindstone 

To Two Gun Barrells 

To Horse gears & Old Iron 

To an Iron Hand-l)ar, & five hoes, 

A spade and an Iron spit 

To a Log Chain & a draught chain 
To an Iron Sledge & prize [lever]. 
To a collar. Rag- Wheel, Two 
drawing knives, two bails, 

three iron wedges, 

" To a piece of Bar Iron, Clevis & 

Pin, 

' ' In Cloathing & Linnen Damnified 1 

in the fire, To lustre sheets, j- 
Pillow beirs, & Napkins, .... J 

" One Coat & Breeches 

" To 20 yards of Woolen Cloath 

" To Linnen Cloath 

" To three Cal\c skines 

" Debts due to the estate: 

" Item. In sil\-er mone\' at 1 7'^ weight 

" Item. In siU'cr money at i 5' weight, 

" In Bills of Public Credit 



£3 02 6 
2160 
o 04 o 

4 OJ o 

15 o 

1 II o 

0180 



1 1 



o 09 



o 






10 





I 


15 








09 








10 





I 


08 








0^ 






14 6 



10 o 






10 





4 


08 








12 


6 





10 





30 


00 





41 


00 





^SS 


00 


9 



152 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" Funerall Expenses, & other debts justly due 
from the Estate, ;!^5 5 i. 

" Smce added: Bills received for 

" Silver, Pewter, melted up, ;^i 02 6 

" I 

Susanna Byram Edson survived her husband twenty- 
two years, she dying in 174 1. It is highly probable that 
their remains were interred in the burial-ground on the 
east side of the Taunton Road (now vSouth Street) , in West 
Bridgewater, and that the headstones originally marking 
their graves were in the course of time destroyed and that 
no others were thereafter substituted for them. 

That Samuel Edson, second, was recognized by the in- 
habitants of the town of Bridgewater as a wealthy man 
appears to be affirmed by the various bequests of the will 
and by many of the items of the inventory of his personal 
property. The land on which the homestead stood, the 
five or six small Titicut lots, the Calling Cove meadow, 
the Cedar Swamp land, the small lot at the Brett-stead, 
and the " other lands" so named and left to his son Samuel, 
probably aggregated not less than seven hundred acres, 
which, added to the eight hundred and fifty-nine willed to 
the different heirs, amounted to more than fifteen hundred 
acres. The bequests of money, amounting to three hundred 
and ten pounds, were, it would seem, amply provided for 
by the silver money itemized in the inventory at ;!^i78 15s. 
yd.; debts due the estate, £']i; and by Bills of Public 
Credit, ;(^2 55 9d; in all, ;^504 i6s. 4d. 

The reversion of the use, service, or "improvement" of 
the negroes, George and Sarah, to the widow during her 

' History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater. Mitchell, Boston, 1840. 
Pp- 30. 36, 39, 40, 65, 76. — Records of the Colony of New Plymouth. Edited by 
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff. Boston, 1855. — Court Orders, vol. v., p. 115. — A Genea- 
logical Account of the Edsons, early settled i)i Bridgewater, with Appendices. 
Lowell, 1864. Pp. 13, 14, 15, Appendix No. i, p. x. — Registry of Wills. Book 
iv., pp. 260, 261, 262, 263. Office of Probate, Plymouth, Massachusetts. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 153 

natural life, evidently substantiates the fact that the two 
servants were slaves, and probably married. As remarked 
by a writer concerning the early conditions of bondage in 
the colonies, "from the reverence entertained by the 
fathers of New England for the nuptial tie, it is safe to 
infer that slave husbands and wives were never parted." 
In 1 7 16, according to the information in possession of 
England's Board of Trade, there were then in the province 
of Massachusetts Bay two thousand negroes, the white 
people numbering ninety-four thousand. 

The legacy of "one hundred pounds in silver money 
partly and partly paper" towards the education of his 
grandson Samuel at Harvard College, in Cambridge, was 
no doubt a consequence of the interest taken by the colo- 
nists in the founding and prosperity of the institution and in 
the higher education of such male children as gave indi- 
vidual evidence of intellectual power. It is related that 
the Rev. James Keith and Elder Wilham Brett procured, 
in the very infancy of the town of Bridge water, " a subscrip- 
tion of about £12, to be paid in Indian corn, for the 
college." 

Samuel Edson's possession of the bills of credit, of the 
value of ;^2 55 gd., is traceable no doubt to the establish- 
ment, in 1 7 14, of "The Public Bank," as it was styled, "with 
a capital provided for it by the General Court, consisting of 
fifty thousand pounds in bills of credit. Its management 
was committed to five trustees, who were authorized to 
lend the bills for periods not to exceed five years, for an 
interest of five [ycr centum annuall\', and a payment each 
year of one fifth ])art of the ])rincipal sum; the payments 
to be secured by mortgages of real property." 

The entry in the inventory, " Cloathing & Linnen 
Damnified in the fire," justifies the inference that the 
family had suffered a loss of propert\' b\- a recent fire. 
This conclusion seems tenable b\- the absence from the 
inventory of such items as beds, bedding, tables, chairs, 



154 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

and other furniture, and by the enumeration of many imple- 
ments and utensils made of iron that the flames could not 
consume. The item of "Two Gun Barrels," the wooden 
gunstocks having been burnt — one of the guns probably 
being the "ffowling piece" inherited from his father — 
afford further evidence of the probable destruction of 
Samuel Edson's house and barn by fire. That his dwelling, 
together with his barn, was burned by the Indians in 1676, 
two years before his marriage, is an assertion that requires 
more substantial testimony than that of a mere hearsay of 
traditional currency.' 

Joseph, the second son of Deacon and Susanna Orcutt 
Edson, born in the town of Salem, in the Colony of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, about 1649, was one of the twenty-one volun- 
teers, as has been related, who, in 1676, bravely encountered 
and courageously attacked a large body of Indians found 
by them prowling on the borders of the town intent upon 
a stealthy descent upon the Bridgewater settlement. 

It is said that he married, in 1678, Experience Field,' 
of Providence, in the Colony of Rhode Island, by whom he 
had two sons, Joseph and Josiah, and one daughter, Ex- 
perience. He was a proprietor or holder of a share in the 
town lands, and, on December 24, 1683, was one of the 
ten to whom was assigned a tract of land on the south side 
of the town, beginning at the Taunton (now Raynham) line 



'"His dwelling-house stood near Mr. Simeon Edson's, and was burned 
with his barn in 1676." * — * "Judge Mitchell (in article 'Bridgewater' of Mass. 
Historical Collections) says that on April 9, 1676 (the time of Philip's war) , 
being Sunday, a party of Indians burned a house and bam during the time of 
public worship. In Church's Philip's War, page 65, it is stated that on 'May 
8' they (the Indians) burned seventeen houses and barns at Bridgewater, a 
large town about twenty miles south of Boston." — .4 Genealogical Account of 
the Edsons, early settled in Bridgewater, with Appendices. Lowell, 1864. 
P. 14. 

2 This may be untrue, for it is said that his wife was Experience Holbrooke, 
the sixth daughter of Captain John and Elizabeth Stream Holbrooke. Her 
father was the son of Thomas Holbrooke of Weymouth, England, who, with his 
family, settled in New England in 1635-36. Vide: Soldiers of King Philip's 
War. By George Madison Bodge. Leominster, Mass., 1896. P. 280. 



• EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 155 

and running thence eastwardly to the Taunton River, and 
being a mile in width. 

When, in 1686, ten acres of woodland were ordered to be 
laid out near the habitation of each proprietor, his, as is 
described, was "on the easterly side of Stony Brook, at 
the Centre Tree." According to later and more definite 
landmarks, " he resided near Brett's Corner, at what is now 
[in 1864] called the ' Old Muster-field,' in East Bridgewater. " 

On August 22, 1687, when a warrant was sent him for 
choosing commissioners for taking a list of the male in- 
habitants of the town, from sixteen years old and upward, 
and for valuing estates in it, he was constable of Bridge- 
water. 

Experience, his first wife, who died in 1685, "was," as 
is related, "a woman of unusually happy disposition, 
graceful in her manners, of a cheerful flow of spirits, and a 
ready wit; but that wit which moderately elevates, impart- 
ing pleasure and exciting mirth without offending. A 
refinement and delicacy of sentiment seemed to pervade 
all her conduct and conversation, but which created no 
rivalship and excited no envy. Lovely and beloved, she 
numbered as many friends as acquaintances, and her early 
death was deeply lamented by the whole town. Her 
visitors were always received with smiles, entertained with 
unaffected good-will, and made happy in the enjoyment 
of her social faculties ; and she was most happy when com- 
municating happiness to others. Her most intimate asso- 
ciates never saw her angry, or excited to vexatioTi. and 
love and friendshi|) both united in doing homage to her 
person and character. She made her famil_\' circle the 
temple of Peace, the fountain of social affections, and the 
scene of the purest of domestic enjoyment. Her children 
were young when she died — the oldest about five years, and 
the voungest. an infant l)Ut a few weeks old." 

In i()8C). Joseph Edson married Mary, daughter of 
George Turner, who bore him three sons — Benjamin, 



156 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA ' 

Samuel, and Timothy; and two daughters, Mary and 
Susanna. 

Joseph Edson was known as a man of strict integrity, 
disposed to be domestic, of unobtrusive manners, avoiding 
public distinction, and contented in the possession of those 
moral and religious characteristics that distinguish an 
honest man and a sincere professor of Christianity. 

As disclosed by the preamble of the inventory taken of 
the " Estate of Mr. Joseph Edson of ye Town of Bridge- 
water," on " November ye 19th, 1 711," he died on " October 
ye Third," that year. Mary, his widow, on February 15, 
1 71 2, as administratrix, made oath that the inventory was 
a true one, the value of the appraised personal property 
being set at ;^85.' 

The remains of Joseph Edson and his two wives were 
doubtless entombed in the burial-ground at West Bridge- 
water, on the east side of the Taunton Road, although no 
information relating to the place of their graves is extant. 

Josiah, the seventh child and the third and youngest 
son of Deacon Samuel and Susanna Orcutt Edson, born in 
Duxbury Plantation, in the Colony of New Plymouth, in 
1 65 1, was just entering upon the twenty-second year of 
his age and was about to marry, when his father affec- 
tionately conveyed to him on February 6, 1673," one full and 
complete purchase or share of lands ' ' of the town of Bridge- 
water, upland and meadow land, divided and undivided, 
wanting five acres of being a full share, lying and being 
in the township of Bridgewater. The particular parcels of 
divided land belonging to this share were the following: 
" first an hundred acres of upland, butting on [the] Taunton 
path [or road] on the southwest end, bounded by the land of 
John Willis, senior, and Edward Fobes' land on the north- 



^ History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater. Mitchell, Boston, 1840. 
Pp. 30, 32, 39, 40, 65, 66. — .4 Genealogical Account of the Edsons, early settled in 
Bridgewater, with Appendices. Lowell, 1864. Pp. 15, 16, 17, 18. — Registry of 
Wills. Book iii., pp. 122, 123. Office of Probate, Plymouth. Massachusetts. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 157 

west, and running in length as the other lots there do." 
Also a meadow, lying on the south side of the river " below 
the mouth of the Great Meadow," "bounded by the 
meadows of Edward Plooper on the west, and a trench oil 
the east side." Also two lots of meadow, lying in the 
Great Meadow, " bounded by the river that runneth out 
of the pond on the north" and a " meadow on the west." 
— Josiah Edson's sister Sarah's marriage, in 1663, to John, 
the eldest child and son of John and Alice Dean, of the 
neighboring town of Taunton, evidently led to his intimacy 
with their 3^ourigest child and only daughter, Elizabeth, who 
became his wife in 1673. 

Neither of his two brothers, Samuel and Joseph, was 
married when he and they went, in 1676, with eighteen 
volunteers in search of the hostile body of savages which 
was reported to be lurking on the outskirts of the town 
and which they found and vigorously attacked, killing 
many and taking others prisoners. 

Josiah Edson, being one of the proprietors of the town, 
was one of the fifteen who, on December 24, 1683, was 
apportioned a section of land on the east side of the town 
which they were afterward to divide among themselves. 
His possession of real estate was further increased on 
January 9, 1688, when his father gratuitously conveyed to 
him a meadow in the Great Meadow tract, bounded on 
the northeast by a meadow that had been owned by 
Samuel Packard, senior, and on the southmost side by 
erne belonging to John Washburn. His father also gave 
him then ten acres of u])land, lying on the westmost side 
of the Taunton Road, as also one of his five shares in the 
lands at Titicut, and also one of his little lots on the west- 
most side of the way, being the southmost of his little lots. 

In 1689, Josiah Edson was a])|)ointed, with Nicholas 
Byram and Edward Mitchell, "to issue the difference be- 
tween the town and John Soule and Josei)h Barstow about 
the [location of the] four-mile line." 



158 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

His wide popularity and eminent qualifications led to 
his election in 1691 as a representative to the General Court 
of the Colony of New Plymouth, as also in 1692, 1698, 1699, 
and 1 7 14, as a representative to the General Court of the 
Province of Massachusetts Bay, at Boston. 

In 1694, he was first sergeant in the town military com- 
pany of which Thomas Hayward was captain; John 
Ha ward (Howard), lieutenant; Samuel Packard, ensign; 
Samuel Washburn, Edward Mitchell, and Nicholas Byram, 
sergeants. Although it is said that he never held 
a higher position in the organization than that of first 
sergeant, it may be true that he was precluded from 
advancement by reason of the first-elected officers retaining 
their respective positions while he was connected with the 
company. 

In 1 7 15, when sixty-four years of age, he was elected 
one of the selectmen of the town, in which office he was con- 
tinued to 1729, a period of fourteen years. He was also 
for many years one of the deacons of the church, and was 
serving in that office at the time of his decease. 

The first abode of himself and wife after their marriage, 
in 1673, is said to have been "in West Bridgewater, on 
the south side of Town River, and east of his father's" 
house, "some four or five six-acre lots intervening." This 
assertion is supported by the fact that, in 1686, when ten 
acres of woodland were to be laid out to each proprietor as 
near to his habitation as the location of such land would 
admit, he is named as living, as was his father, "on the 
south side of Town River, below Goodman Alden's." In 
1698, it would seem that he still had his residence there 
and was then one of five co-partners operating the saw- 
mill on the stream, as is disclosed by the following action 
taken that year: 

"The town agreed to make a cart-bridge over the town 
river at Lieutenant Haward's [Howard's,] and the owners 
of the saw-mill, viz: — Josiah Edson, Edward Fobes, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 159 

Ephraim Haward [Howard], Thomas Snell/ and Jose])h 
Hayward agreed to do their ])arts to it over and above 
what the rest of the town did, because their mill ]K)n(l 
made a necessity for the bridge." 

The territory of the town of Bridgcwater continued to 
bear that geographical designation until 17 16. Certain 
inhabitants of the easterly part of the town, desiring the 
privilege of having a meeting-house there, petitioned the 
General Court, in 171 5, to have that section of the town 
made a separate precinct. "A viewing committee was 
appointed consisting of John Gushing and Edmund Quincy 
of the Council, and George Leonard, Henry Hodges, and 
Jacob Thomson of the House of Representatives. They 
made a favorable report on April 18, 17 16, which was 
accepted and an act of incorporation passed," on June i, 
"with this condition: 'that the whole town stand obliged 
to an honorable maintenance of the Rev. Mr. Keith, their 
present aged minister, if he should outlive his powers and 
capacities of discharging the office and duty of their 
minister. ' 

"The dividing line began 'at the brook, called the Mile 
Brook, where the road from Boston to Taunton crosseth 
the said brook, and from thence by a line running easterly 
in the midway, between the dwelling-house of William 
Hudson, and the dwelling-house of David Perkins, jr., and 
from thence the said line to be continued in the midst, be- 
tween the dwelling-house of Edward Mitchell and the dwell- 
ing-house of Nathaniel Hayward, and from thence the said 
line to be continued easterly in the midst, between the 
dwelling-house of James Latham and the dwelling-house 
of J()se])h Washburn, jr., and from thence by a line due 
east to the extent of the said townshi]:».' 

"The new parish was called the South Precinct, and the 
old parish, the North Precinct. The largest part of the 
town remained with the North Precinct, as it was suggested 

' Thomas Snell, it is said, was a nephew of Deacon Samuel Edson. 



i6o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

that there might be need of a third meeting-house. It was 
recommended that the new meeting-house should be erected 
'on the high or rising ground on the southerly side of the 
highway going by John Washburn's house, being the 
easterly part of his field,' and 'that the old meeting-house 
remain where it was, for five years, and then be removed 
down to Isaac Johnson's field,'" where divers roads met 
convenient for access to it. 

The new meeting-house, erected in the South Precinct, 
was dedicated on June 14, 171 7; on which occasion the 
Rev. James Keith delivered the sermon that was subse- 
quently printed under the title of Bridgcwater' s Monitor. 

Before the time arrived for removing the old meeting- 
house in the North Precinct (or in West Bridgewater) , the 
inhabitants of the eastern part of the town, who were then 
contemplating the building of a meeting-house, assisted 
with their contributions in repairing the old house of wor- 
ship, with the understanding that the money which they 
had expended in its reconstruction should be refunded 
them when they undertook the erection of their meeting- 
house. 

On December 14, 1723, the settlers in the east end of 
the North Precinct, together with nine persons of the South 
Precinct, with their families and estates, were constituted 
a precinct called the East Parish. The boundary on the 
west was a due-north line from the South Parish or Precinct 
through the Centre Tree. The erection of the first meeting- 
house in the East Parish was begun on March 14, 1720. 

The Rev. Benjamin Allen, the first pastor of the church 
in the South Parish or Precinct, a native of Tisbury, of 
Martha's Vineyard, and a graduate of Yale College, was 
ordained on July 9, 17 18. His pastorate in the parish 
covered a period of thirteen years. He preached his first 
sermon in the new meeting-house on August 18, 1717, and 
his last on October 11, 1730. 

The Rev. James Keith's service of fifty-six years as 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA i6i 

pastor of the Bridgewater Church ended with his death on 
July 23, 1 719, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. His 
successor, the Rev. Daniel Perkins, a graduate of Harvard 
College in 17 17, was ordained on October 4. 1721. He 
died on September 29, 1782, aged eighty-six years, and in 
the sixtv-second vear of his ministrv, which, as said, was 
not only long but peaceful and efficacious. The Rev. John 
Angier, the first pastor of the church in the East Parish, 
was a graduate of Harvard College in 1720. He was 
ordained on October 28, 1724. He died on April 24, 1787, 
aged eighty-six, and in the sixty-third 3^ear of his ministry. 

Josiah Edson probably had been a resident in the South 
Parish a score of years before his death, living, it is said, 
"where Solomon Ames lived and after him Captain Asa 
Pratt, and now (in 1854) Philo Mitchell." He was a justice 
of the peace for a long time, and until the close of his life. 

By his will, made on September 5, 1733, his wife Eliza- 
beth; Sarah, the wife of his nephew Josiah, son of Joseph 
and Experience Field Edson; Josiah, the son of the said 
nephew, and Josiah 's brothers, Abiezer and Elijah; and 
their sisters — Abiah, Huldah, and Freelove — were severally 
his heirs. 

Justice Edson died in the South Parish of the town of 
Bridgewater, on October 4, 1734, in the eighty-fourth }^ear 
of his age, where also his wife died, on November 25, 1737, 
in the eighty-sixth year of her age, without offspring. 
Their remains are entombed in the "Old Graveyard," near 
the Unitarian Church, the first burird ground in the South 
Precinct, now known as Bridgewater. 

Justice Edson ])ossessed a large property. In 1704, he 
conveyed a considerable part of his real estate to his nephew, 
Ca])tain Josiah Edson, " on condition that he should supjiort 
him and his wife during life." On May 28, 1722. Justice 
Edson, "for and in consideration of the love, good-will, 
and affection ' ' that he had and bore towards his neighbors 
and friends in the South Precinct, and for the promotion 



i62 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

and encouragement of learning among them, conveyed to 
them "a certain tract or parcel of land lying nigh to the 
dwelling-house of Samuel Edson, in said Bridgewater, con- 
taining by estimation twenty acres," more or less. Lest 
his "design and intent" in this gift might be frustrated, 
he nominated and appointed his " trusty and well-beloved 
friends, Nathaniel and Benjamin Hayward, " the assessors 
that year of the South Precinct, and " their successors after 
them in said office forever, to take ye care of said land, that 
the profits and income of it" might "be laid out towards 
defraying ye charge of a school or schools in said precinct." 

By his deed, dated November 28, 1722, he gave the 
town of Bridgewater one great lot and two small lots, called 
Titicut lots, for the encouragement of a grammar school, and 
appointed his well-beloved friends. Captain J. Field, Na- 
thaniel Brett, Nathaniel Ha3rward, and Joseph Edson, 
selectmen, and their successors, to take charge of the above- 
named land, the profits to be used towards the expenses 
of a grammar school, with liberty to sell the same if they 
should find it to the advantage of said school. 

No man in Bridgewater, living there when he was a 
resident of the town, enjoyed a larger share of the public 
confidence and esteem than Justice Edson. " His intel- 
lectual ability was above mediocrity. His presence was 
noble and commanding ; his deportment easy and dignified ; 
his voice deep, mellow, and impressive; and the expression 
of his countenance gave assurance of a generous, beneficent 
heart. In every prominent act of his life, he gave evidence 
of a sound mind and a discreet judgment, combined with a 
liberal and magnanimous charity; always exhibiting the 
complacent manners of the gentleman and the humility of 
the Christian. 

" His wife was the most accomplished lady of the town. 
Her animated conversation and lively flow of spirits de- 
lighted all who participated in the fascination of her wit 
and the brilliancy of her colloquial powers. She united in 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 163 

a remarkable degree the artless simplicity of a child with 
those delicate and undefinable qualities of person and man- 
ners which engross the mind without disturbing the senses. 
In her conversation there was a combination of ingenu- 
ousness, wit and humor — an amiable tenderness— a secret 
spell — imparting goodness, which it was impossible to re- 
sist ; yet all was perfectly natural, nothing affected. . . . 
" Elegant in person, graceful and dignified in her de- 
portment, courteous to her inferiors, complacent to equals, 
assuming no superiority over any but familiar with all, she 
lived through a long life, respected and beloved by every 
acquaintance. To the close of her life, she retained the 
vivid traits of a beautiful and elegant person." ' 



^ History of the Early Settlement of Bridgetvaier. Mitchell, Boston, 1840. 
Pp- 3i> 36, 39. 40, 45. 46, 47. 48, 65, 67, -js.^Records of the Colony of Neiv Ply- 
mouth. Edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Boston, 1855. — Court Orders, vol. 
vi., pp. 263, 268. — -.4 Genealogical Account of the Edsons, early settled in Bridge- 
water, with Appendices. Lowell, 1864. Pp. 18, 19, 20, 21. Appendix No. 2, 
pp. xii., xiii., xiv. Registry of Wills. Book vii., pp. 71, 72, 73. Office of Pro- 
bate, Plymouth, Massachusetts. 



Chapter VI 
Samuel Edson, third, of Bridgewater 

1690-1771 

ON the seating of George the First on the throne of Great 
Britain, in 17 14, the General Court of the Province 
of Massachusetts Bay, as it was both customary and politic 
for the American dependencies to do when a new king 
began wielding the sceptre to which the colonists were sub- 
ject, tendered in due form an address to His Majesty, pray- 
ing, first, for a continuance of the privileges granted them 
by the charter of the province; second, for the encourage- 
ment of the production of naval stores within the limits of 
the province; and, third, for the prevention of the enlarge- 
ment of the settlements on Cape Breton Island by the 
French, who, after their loss of Nova Scotia, might seat 
themselves there in great numbers, to the disadvantage of 
the people of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. 

In 1 72 1, the British Board of Trade, in a report to King 
George the First, described with considerable detail the 
condition of affairs in the province, remarking that the 
militia was estimated at sixteen thousand men ; that within 
the limits of the dependency there were twelve hundred 
converted or friendly Indians; that the productions of the 
province fitted for the use of Great Britain were principally 
timber, turpentine, tar, pitch, masts, cask and hogshead 
staves, whale oil, and some furs; that the trade it had with 
"the foreign plantations in America" such as Surinam, and 
" Martinico and other French islands" consisted chiefly in 

164 



i 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 165 

horses, and that froni those places the returnin(^ vessels 
came laden with sugar, molasses, and rum, which was "a 
very great discouragement to the sugar-planters in the 
British islands." 

The report particularized not a few noteworthy facts 
concerning the industrial activity of the colonists of the 
province, setting forth the one that the people had " 'all 
sorts of common manufactures,' spinning and weaving 
' their own wool into coarse cloths, druggets, and serges, ' 
besides making ' homespun linen, which was generally half 
cotton.' " No little prominence was given to the fact that 
" ' the branch of trade which was the greatest importance 
to them, and which they were best enabled to carry on, was 
the building of ships, sloops,' and other craft; that about 
a hundred and fifty vessels were built in a year, measuring 
six thousands tons; that most of these were built for sale 
abroad, but that there belonged to the province 'about a 
hundred and ninety sail, which might contain six thousand 
tons, and were navigated by about eleven hundred men; 
besides a hundred and fifty boats, with six hundred men, 
employed in the fisheries on their own coast.' " 

On the death of King George the First, in 1727, the 
sceptre of Great Britain passed into the hands of his son, 
who, as King George the Second, reigned until 1760. Dur- 
ing their reigns, three members of the Edson family repre- 
sented the people of the town of Bridgewater at the General 
Court: Justice Josiah Edson, in 1714; Captain Josiah Edson, 
in 1735, '36, '39, '43, and '45; and Colonel Josiah Edson, 
from 1746 to 1750. Their presence in Boston, while at- 
tending the sessions of the House of Representati\'es, con- 
sequently afforded them excellent opportunities of acquiring 
the latest intelligence regarding both foreign and domestic 
affairs. On returning to llie town of Bridgewater, they 
naturally became popular servitors of the inhabitants by 
dispensing such information as was sought after in mat- 
ters appertaining to the welfare of the colonists and the 



i66 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

disposition of the reigning sovereign for the furtherance of 
the interests of his subjects in America. 

Samuel, the youngest of the three children, and the only 
son of Samuel and Susanna Byram Edson, born in the 
town of Bridgewater, on January 14, 1689-90, when eigh- 
teen years old, or, on January i, 1707-8, was united by 
marriage to Mary, the fourth child and third daughter of 
Benjamin and Sarah Williams Dean, of Taunton, who was 
three years older than her husband. 

The only political office held by him was that of coroner 
of the town of Bridgewater, to which he was appointed on 
June 22, 1733. At that time the office was regarded, as it 
had been anciently, as one of considerable importance. As 
represented by an old statute, none but lawful and discreet 
knights, possessing real estate of the value of twenty pounds, 
were eligible to the office of coroner. Froni a very early 
date in England coroners have been elected by the county 
freeholders, although, in certain liberties and franchises, 
they have been appointed by the Crown, or by lords hold- 
ing a charter from the Crown. In the mother country, 
as well as in New England, it was the duty of those holding 
the office to inquire the cause of the sudden or mysterious 
death of any inhabitant or stranger in the fields of their 
jurisdiction, and to impart such facts or circumstances 
known to them regarding the same to an inquest or jury 
of twelve properl}^ qualified men in sight of the body of 
the dead person, and, if practicable, at the place where the 
remains were found, and to make public the verdict of 
the jury. 

The majority of the settlers of New England, fearful 
that the liberty of worshipping God according to the dic- 
tates of their own consciences might be denied them by 
the arbitrary act of a Popishly inclined king, or by the 
political influence of the clergy of the Church of England 
desiring the establishment of an Episcopal form of religious 
service in the American dependencies of Great Britain, were 



1 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 167 

disposed to look with distrust upon any change of regal 
power and to watch with suspicious misgivings the slightest 
tendency towards the introduction of an Anglican bishop 
or clergyman within the territorial limits of the colonies. 

The arrival of the first clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
land, the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe, on the frigate Rose, on 
Saturday, May 15, 1686, commissioned to officiate in Boston 
according to the ritual of the English Church, was an event 
that caused no little unfriendly comment as well as fore- 
boding of evil among the strenuous upholders of Congre- 
gationalism. ^He was allowed the use of an east room in 
the Town House (which then stood where afterwards the 
Old State House was built), until those who desired to at- 
tend his ministrations should provide a fitter place. There 
the English liturgy was read, and, on June 15, 1686, a 
"Church of England as by law established" was organized 
in Boston, as is set forth by the initial entry in the parch- 
ment-bound folio containing the earliest records of King's 
Chapel. On Frida}^ March 25, 1687, Sir Edmund Andros, 
governor of New England, had the door of the South Meet- 
ing-house opened, and on that day, and subsequently for 
several years, the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe conducted religious 
services there as opportunity offered, but not without fre- 
quent protests from the Congregationalists owning the 
edifice, who statedly worshipped in it. 

In the fall of 1688, the Church of England congrega- 
tion in Boston laid the foundation of its first house of 
worship, in which, on Sunday, June 8, 1689, services began 
to be held. It was erected on the old burial-ground cover- 
ing the space now occupied by the tower and front part of 
the present building known as King's Chapel, on the north- 
east corner of Tremont and School streets. It was built at 
a cost of ^284 i6s., or $1,384. To defray the expense of 
its erection, ninety-six colonists contributed £2^6 9s.. the 
remainder being given by British officers. On April 18, 
1689, the news having been received from England of a 



i68 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

rebellion inaugurated there against King James the Second 
— who, on the landing of William, Prince of Orange, had be- 
taken himself to France — some of the excited citizens of 
Boston, fearing that Sir Edmund Andros might be insti- 
gated b}^ the Roman Catholics to surrender the city to the 
French, forthwith imprisoned the governor. The tumul- 
tuous proceeding so terrified the rector of the English 
Church that he speedily quitted the country, and the hold- 
ing of Episcopal services was discontinued for several 
months. On June 30, 1689, the fifth Sunday after Trin- 
ity, King's Chapel was again opened for religious worship, 
the Rev. Samuel Myles becoming the successor of the Rev. 
Robert Ratcliffe. 

The Rev. Thomas Bray, perceiving that the spiritual 
needs of the colonists in the American dependencies of 
Great Britain might in part be lessened by the missionary 
services of clergymen of the Church of England, earnestly 
exerted himself to obtain a Royal Charter instituting a 
religious body to undertake such work in a devout and 
advantageous manner. Having secured one establishing 
" The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
Parts," the founders held their first meeting at Lambeth 
Palace, in London, on June 27, 1701. 

The object of the society, as particularized by the in- 
strument of institution, was twofold: "First, the provision 
of ' learned and orthodox ministers ' for ' the administra- 
tion of God's Word and Sacraments' among the King's 
' loving subjects in the Plantations, Colonies, and Factories 
beyond the Seas belonging to our Kingdom of England ' ; 
and. Secondly, the making of ' such other provision as may 
be necessary for the Propagation of the Gospel in those 
places where English settlements had been made. ' ' Atheism 
and Infidelity, ' on the one hand, and ' Popish Superstition 
and Idolatry ' were to be guarded against among the people 
of the plantations by the institution of this society, and 
a ' maintenance for ministers and the public worship 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 169 

of God' was deemed 'highly conducive for accom])hshing 
these ends.' 

The zeal and teachings of the society began to be a]j- 
parent wherever its missionaries labored in the different 
provinces, colonies, and plantations subject to Oreat Bri- 
tain. As soon as the people in a settlement who had been 
spiritually instructed by them were sufficient in number 
to be organized into a worshipping bod}% they were con- 
stituted a church, which was either assigned to the care of 
the local missionary or placed under the charge of a resi- 
dent clergyman. Gifts of money as well as of land were 
from time to time made to the society by prosperous and 
influential colonists, and here and there in the various 
towns of New England Episcopal churches, known as those 
of the Church of England, began to rise and flourish, even 
when regarded as sanctuaries of bigots and enemies of 
Christian liberty. 

On April 15, 1723, the corner-stone of Christ Church 
was laid in Boston, and on December 29, that year, it was 
opened for worship. Known now as the oldest church 
ediflce and next to the oldest public building in the city, 
it still stands as a venerable landmark on the northeast 
corner of Salem and Bennet streets. As further described, 
" the brick walls of the church are two feet and a half thick ; 
its spire is a hundred and seventy-five feet high ; and from 
its steeple the lanterns were displayed which guided Paul 
Revere on his ride, on the night of the eighteenth of April, 
1775, from Boston to Concord. The first rector of Christ 
Church was the Rev. Timothy Cutler, who had been con- 
verted to E])iscopacy while rector of Yale College, and who, 
resigning liis position there, went to I£ngland, and was 
ordained in London, in March, 1723. He was appointed 
missionary by the Societ}' for the Propagation of the Gos- 
pel in Foreign Parts, and. began his rectorshi]) [of Christ 
Church] on the twents'-fourth of SepU'ni])L'r, 1723, con- 
tinuing in this office forty-two \oars. Eight}' families 



I70 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

and forty communicants formed the congregation at the 
beginning, which increased afterwards to eight hundred 
persons." 

It seems evident that Coroner Edson formed an ac- 
quaintance with one or more of the missionaries of the 
society, and, having no bitterness of heart to inchne him 
to be unfriendly toward the zealous and exemplary clergy- 
men whose field of evangelization embraced the town of 
Bridgewater, extended them welcome and entertainment 
under his roof-tree near the southern limits of the precinct 
of West Bridgewater, and not far from the place where, in 
1854, Simeon Taylor was living. He and his wife, besides 
enjoying the acquaintanceship of these devout men grad- 
ually grew interested in the success of their work, par- 
ticularly as the ancestors of the Edson and Dean families 
had been churchmen of good standing in England, and of 
whom there was still extant considerable infoiTQation among 
their descendants in New England. 

Prompted by a wish to have a portion of his real estate 
set apart as a memorial of his and his wife's knowledge of 
their ancestors' affection for the Church of England and of 
their own personal desire to further the work of the Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, he, on 
January 23, 1747, conveyed to it fourteen and a half acres 
of land "for ye use, benefit, and behalf of a minister of 
ye Episcopal Church of Bridgewater for ye time being and 
his successors forever, and to build a church upon, and for 
a churchyard, and to and for no other use whatever"; 
the plot being in the South Precinct or Parish of the town^ 
now known as Bridgewater, and on the East side of Main 
Street, north of Wall. Sufficient money was subscribed 
by a ntimber of interested persons to erect on the lot a 
house of worship in 1748, a frame building now standing 
on the north side of the churchyard. Thereafter, until their 
deaths, it is said, Samuel Edson and his wife Mary Dean 
regularly attended the services conducted in the jjlainly 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



171 



built edifice; a simple wooden altar in a narrow, undeco- 
rated chancel separated from the body of the church by a 
low, rmpretentious railing of wood being the only object of 
any prominence in it. 

In April, 181 2, the plot of ground was formally con- 
veyed to the Trustees of Donations, in Boston, who leased 
it for nine hundred and ninety-nine years to John Edson 
for an annual rent of twenty-one dollars. Under the name 
of the Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church of Bridge- 
water, the organization was incorporated on June 14, 18 15. 




THE FIRST AND THE SECOND PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCHES IN BRID3EWATER 

The house of worship having been repaired, and an assess- 
ment having been laid for the support of public worshi]) 
in it, the building was consecrated on June 12, 18 16, b\- 
the Right Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold, D.D., bishop of 
the eastern diocese of Massachusetts, assisted by the Re\-. 
John Lauris Blake and Nathan Bourne Crocker. 

Trinity Church 1 )urial-ground, described as comprising 
forty-four sc|uare rods of land, extends one himdred and 
twelve feet along the east side of Main Street, in the northern 
part of the village of Bridgewater. A low stone wall pro- 
tects it from intrusion on the west side A few interments 



172 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

were made in it during the first twenty or thirty years of 
its use. In 1873, it was enlarged by a gift of about one 
acre and sixty rods by Mary, the widow of John Edson. 
The church lot is on the south side of the burial-ground. 
The first house of worship was moved to the north side of the 
graveyard to afford a site for the second edifice, which for 
many years stood on the south side of the burial-ground. 
The church in which the present congregation worships is 
on the same side of Main Street, but at a considerable dis- 
tance southward from the original house of worship, now 
used partly as a painter's shop. 

Three marble monuments, each inclosed by an iron 
fence with stone posts, were severally erected in the grave- 
yard, in 1850, by John Edson, Increase Robinson, and 
Jacob Robinson. The iron fence erected by John Edson 
incloses a space eleven feet square, on which a marble 
monument, twenty inches square and four feet high, dis- 
plays on its west side the following inscription: 

"Samuel Edson, who died December 27, 1771, in the 
eighty-second year of his age, gave the land known as the 
glebe, in 1747, on which the church was built wherein he 
was a worshipjjer about twenty years." 

On the weather-beaten headstones marking the graves 
of Samuel and Mary Dean Edson, the following inscrip- 
tions were once deeply engraved: 

" Here lies buried Mr. Samuel Edson, who died Dec. 
27, 1771, in ye 82d year of his age." 

" Here lies buried Mrs. Mary Edson, wife of Mr. Samuel 
Edson, who died Feb. 5, 1770, in the 83d year of her age." 

They were the parents of thirteen children, all of whom 
married and reared large families, their grandchildren being 
more than three score in number. When they died, five of 
their six daughters and all their sons were living; Bethiah, 
their second child and daughter, the wife of Ezra, son of 
Walter and Eleanor Strong Dean, being deceased. 

Six months after the death of his wife (whom he sur- 



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174 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

vived one year and ten months), Samuel Edson made his 
last will and testament, bearing date of August 23, 1770. 
In the preamble of the instrument, he is styled a resident 
"of Bridgewater, in the County of Plymouth, in New 
England, gentleman. ' ' The different bequests made to his 
children attest the fact that he was possessed of consider- 
able property. The site of certain lands belonging to him 
he describes as "lying between James Hooper's and Eben- 
ezer Keith's, in said Bridgewater." 

Elizabeth, his eighth child and fourth daughter, married, 
in 1745, Benanuel, son of Benjamin and Hepzibah Wash- 
burn Leach, and, in 1756, Caleb Washburn. Whether she 
was alive or dead at the time of the making of the will, he 
had no knowledge. 

His bequests are specified as follows : 

"Item. I give and bequeath to my son Samuel, . . . 
all the lands belonging to his homestead, described in a 
deed, — also one third part of my meadow on the west side 
of the brook at Coaster's Kitchen (so called) lying by 
Lathrop's line; and one sixth part of my cedar swamp, 
and a piece of land on the northerly side of mile brook; 
and my right in undivided land in said Bridgewater. 

" Item. I give unto my son Nathan ... in his 
life time thirty acres of land, as may appear by a deed of gift. 

" Item. I give and bequeath to my son Abel . 
the homestead where he now liveth, described by a deed, 
also about thirty-fotir acres of land, more or less, lying 
between the land of Isaac Willis and the land of Solomon 
Ames's heirs, — also one third part of my meadow on the 
west side of the brook at Coaster's Kitchen, the westerly 
end of the meadow, together with one sixth part of my 
cedar swamps. 

" Item. I give and bequeath to my son Obed, . . . 
besides what I have already given him by deed, one sixth 
part of my cedar swamps. 

" Item. I give and bequeath to my son Ebenezer, be- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 175 

sides what I have already given him by deed, one sixth 
part of my cedar swamps. 

" Item. I give to my son John, . . . besides what 
I have given him by deed, a piece of land lying westward 
of [the] Chm-ch in said Bridgewater, running to the west- 
ward to the road that leads by Aldrich's old place (so called) , 
also one sixth part of my cedar swamps. . . . 

"Item. I give and bequeath to my son Ezra, 
besides what I have already given him by deed, my land 
and orchard on the west side of the road that leads by 
Aldrich's old place (so called), together with one sixth part 
of my cedar swanip. 

"Item. ... to ni}^ sons John and Ezra, 
forty acres of land at a place called the rocky-mine beds, 
joining to the land of James Perkins and Samuel Dunbar, 
and partly by my son Samuel's land. . . . 

"To my daughter Susanna, . . . eight pounds, to ?^ 
be paid in cattle, within a year after my decease, by my son 
Ezra, out of the estate given him. 

" To my grandchildren, children of my daughter Be- 
thiah, late wife of Ezra Dean, . . . eight pounds." 

" To my daughter Mary, . . . eight pounds. . . . 

" To Elizabeth, my daughter, her heirs or assigns, not 
knowing whether she be dead or alive, five shillings. . . . 

" To my daughter Silence, eight pounds. . . . 

" To my daughter Sarah, eight pounds. 

" To my son Ezra about two acres of meadow land 
lying on the westerly side of Nippenicket pond, which 
land I bought of Benjamin Leach, jr., and Hannah, his 
wife." 

"To my sons, Samuel, Abel, Obed, John, and Ezra, all 
my other lands that I have not already disposed of." 

The will was probated on January 6, 1772, ten days 
after the death of the maker. 

The ascription of "gentleman" indubitably expressed 
the reputation of Samuel Edson, third, as a citizen, an 



T76 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

officer, and a churchman. Unostentatious and yet dignified, 
he was evidently one of Nature's noblemen. 

The conflict between England and France, known as 
King George's War, which began in 1744, and closed by 
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed on October 7, 1748, 
was not participated in to any great extent by the colonists 
of New England. Nathan, the second son of Samuel and 
Mary Dean Edson, served from March 25, that year, as a 
"centinel" in Captain Thomas Henderson's company until 
December 21, a period of thirty-eight weeks and six days ; 
the company being for a time stationed at " Pleasant 
Point.'" 



' A Compendious History of New England from the Discovery by Europeans 
to the First General Congress of the Anglo- American Colonies. By John Gorham 
Palfrey. In four volumes. Boston and New York, 1883. Vol. iii., pp. 355, 
398, 399. — History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater. Mitchell. Boston, 
1840. Pp. 36, 51. — A Genealogical Account of the Edsons, early settled in Bridge^- 
water, with Appendices. Lowell, 1864. Pp.19, 22, 25, 32; Appendix No. i. 
Pp. ii., iii., vii., viii., x. — The Alassachusetts Civil List, for the Colonial and Pro- 
vincial Periods, 16^0-1^^4. By William H.Whitmore. Albany, 1870. P. 157. 
— The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 
1630-1880. Edited by Justin Winsor. In four volumes. Boston, 1881. Vol. 
i., pp. 200, 201, 211, 215. — The History of the American Episcopal Church, 
1587-1883. By William Steven Perry. In two volumes. Boston, 1885. 
Vol. i., pp. 178, 190, 197, 198. — A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in tlic United States of America. By Charles C. Tiffany. New York, 1895. Pp. 
loi, 102. — Epitaphs in Old Bridgewater. By Williams Latham. Bridgewater, 
1822. Pp. 145, 146, 148. — Plymouth Registry. Book xxxix., p. 72. — Registry 
of Wills. Book xxi., pp. 64-65. Office of Probate, Plymouth, Massachu- 
setts. — Massachusetts Archives. Muster Rolls, in the office of the Secretary of 
State, Boston. Vol. xcii., p. 195. 



Chapter VII 
Edsons in the French and Indian War 

1754-1763 

THE ambition of the French to enjoy and control the en- 
tire fur- trade of the aboriginal inhabitants of North 
America, and to restrict Great Britain from acquiring 
governmental power over domain other than that within 
the bounds of her American colonies, incited that emulous 
nation to renew with greater ardor about the middle of the 
eighteenth century its prolonged efforts to accomplish that 
which it had for many years been intent on doing. Over- 
tures of amity and barter were repeatedly made in secret 
ways to the different tribes of savages popularly known as 
the Six Nations, — the Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas, Ca- 
yugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, — ^ having hunting-grounds 
along the Mohawk River and the lake region of the Province 
of New York, while leagues of friendship and traffic were 
cemented with other Indians occupying more distant hunt- 
ing-grounds. Forts and stockaded trading-houses were 
built by the energetic competitors of the English to form a 
chain of defensive outposts along the south side of the St. 
Lawrence River, about the interior lakes, and at eligible 
points on the banks of the Ohio, Illinois, and Mississippi 
rivers, or, in other words, at advantageous i)laces on the 
vast extent of territory lying between the (nilf of St. Law- 
rence and the Gulf of Mexico. 

England, short-sighted and parsimonious, seeking to 

enlarge her re\cnues l)y duties antl restrictions imposed 
12 

177 



178 EDSONS IN ENGLAND iVND AMERICA 

upon the inhabitants of her colonies, gave Httle attention to 
the political and commercial advantages that France was 
securing elsewhere in North America. His Excellency, Wil- 
liam Shirley, Governor of the Province of Massachusetts 
Bay, cognizant of Great Britain's shortcomings and want 
of circumspection in matters relating to the welfare of the 
people of New England, disclosed, in the spring of 1754, his 
knowledge of the aggressiveness of the French by writing 
as follows to representatives of the English government: 
" The French claim all the country lying to the westward of 
the Appalachian or Alleghany Mountains. . . . They 
seem to have advanced further towards making themselves 
masters of this continent within these last five or six years 
than they have done ever since the first beginning of their 
settlements upon it." 

Some months later, desiring the British ministry to pro- 
vide the militia of the Province of Massachusetts Bay with 
two thousand stand of arms, he prudently presented to 
their consideration a number of pertinent facts respecting 
the necessity of making Nova Scotia an English outpost. 
" ' When Nova Scotia is lost,' he declared, ' the French may 
be looked upon to be in the end masters of the continent. ' 
Their great embarrassment, he said, was the difficulty of 
subsistence. The soil of Canada did not yield enough to 
feed its own people. Cape Breton [Island] was scarcely 
better. Nova Scotia was fertile and productive. The pos- 
session of Nova Scotia would give to the French easy com- 
munications with Canada by the Bay of Fundy on the one 
side, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the other, and would 
offer to them a conquest of New England as far as the 
Merrimack. It ' would open an entrance for as many 
troops as they should think fit to yjour in from Old France, ' 
and. New England overrun, there could, he argued, be no 
further resistance ; for ' the western colonies ' were always 
exposed and weak by reason of their holding slaves. ' Nova 
Scotia abounds with safe and commodious harbors, capable 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 179 

of entertaining larger squadrons than the same extent of 
sea-coast in any other part of the world.' With Nova 
Scotia, New Hampshire would be lost, 'from whence the 
royal navy is almost wholly supplied with masts, yards, 
bowsprits,' and other ship-building material." 

The erection and occupation by the French of forts and 
trading stations along the Ohio River ultimately brought 
the armed forces of England into open conflict with those 
of France. That the long series of battles, massacres, and 
burnings of comfortable homes and provender-filled barns, 
historically titled ' ' the French and Indian War, ' ' beginning in 
1754 and continuing nine years, " should be conducted," as 
remarked by Palfrey, " with punctilious humanity on either 
side was not to be expected in the circumstances. The 
brutal Indian would not certainly be more merciful than 
the civilized soldiers who led him into the field. In the long 
course of these wars the ferocity which is one permanent 
element in the French character had been conspicuously 
displayed, and the bloodthirstiness of Popish zeal had lent 
its aid to invest the assaults upon the English with all cir- 
cumstances of inhumanity and horror. 

" The people of the New England colonies — especially of 
Massachusetts, which was chiefly concerned — believed that 
they should have no more trouble with the Indians, if the 
French were only out of the w^ay. And with perhaps no 
sanguine hope after such dismal disappointments, 3^et with 
a stern resolve to bring about that all-important consum- 
mation, they engaged once more in costly conflict. A prodi- 
gality of money and blood was not to be shrunk from, so it 
should relieve their posterity from the nuisance of such 
neighbors. And if at this calmer time they seem to us even 
to have resorted to any measure involving more than the 
customary rigors of war, it is fit we should consider whether, 
however repulsive in its severit}', it may not justly or natu- 
rally have been considered as due to the necessity of self- 
preservation. " 



i8o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

On April 14, 1755, at a council of war held at Alexan- 
dria, Va., at which General Edward Braddock, Governor 
William Shirley, and other English governors and officers 
were present, it was determined that the military oper- 
ations of Great Britain and the Anglo-American colonies 
should at first be directed against the French forces holding 
Fort Duquesne, on the Ohio River, now the site of Pitts- 
burg; Fort Niagara, at the mouth of the Niagara River, on 
Lake Ontario, which, " with the work at Oswego, a hundred 
and twenty miles to the east of it, commanded that lake, 
and the relations of the two to Montreal, on the one side, and 
to Fort Duquesne on the other, kept up the communica- 
tion of Canada with the Ohio, and so with the Mississippi 
and the Gulf of Mexico. Further east and close at hand, 
the French menaced the New England settlements from 
Lake George and Lake Champlain, where they held Crown 
Point and Ticonderoga; while in Nova Scotia they contin- 
ued to maintain a disturbing familiarity with the turbulent 
rout of eastern Indians." 

General Braddock, who intended attacking and captur- 
ing Fort Duquesne, departed, on April 20, 1755, from Alex- 
andria, Va., with 1,460 troops. Having, on July 9, crossed the 
Monongahela River, eight miles from the fort, he fell into 
an ambush of Indians, in which 456 of his men were killed 
and 421 wounded; the rash conmiander having four horses 
shot under him, and being himself fatally wounded. It is 
said that only a small force of French soldiers took part in 
the attack upon the English. The disorderly retreat of the 
demoralized remnant left many prisoners in the hands of 
the savage allies of the French. The horrors of the disas- 
trous defeat were rendered the more vivid by the appalling 
accounts of the frantic orgies of the exultant savages. They, 
after nightfall, stripped many of their prisoners, cut and 
slashed their naked bodies, burned them with powder and 
coals of fire, scalped the tortured, shrieking victims, who, 
after hours of indescribable suffering, gladly welcomed death. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA i8i 

Early in the spring of 1755, the enlistment and impress- 
ment of men to take part in the expedition against the 
French outpost, Fort St. Frederic, at Crown Point, at the 
south end of Lake Champlain, about one hundred and ten 
miles from Albany, was actively begun in New England. 
In the town of Bridgewater, among the first of the loyal in- 
habitants to enlist in His Majesty's (King George the Sec- 
ond's) service was Ebenezer, the fifth son of Samuel and Mary 
Dean Edson, then twenty-seven years old. He served as a 
private in the company in command of Captain Nathaniel 
Gilbert from the time of his enlistment to September 8, and 
thereafter until November 20, 1755, when the company was 
under the command of Captain Nathaniel Blake ; the organ- 
ization being in Colonel Timothy Ruggles's regiment of 
Massachusetts Bay provincials, that formed a part of the 
army of which Major- General William Johnson of the Prov- 
ince of New York had command. 

The troops to attack Fort St. Frederic assembled in June 
and July at Albany. About the end of July, Major-General 
Phineas Lyman of Connecticut, with about six hundred 
men, preceded the main body, in order to make the road 
northward passable for it. On the tenth of August, the 
army of English regulars and provincials quitted Albany to 
march to its destination; Major-General Johnson following 
with the artillery, stores, and baggage. 

On reaching the Great Carrying Place, between the Hud- 
son River and Lake St. Sacrament' (Lake George), on the 
fourteenth of August, Major-General Johnson reported the 
number of men of his entire force "fit for marching to 
Crown Point, " as not exceeding 2,850. At a council of war. 
held on the following day, it was considered necessary that 
reinforcements should be requested of the governors of the 
provinces of New York and Connecticut, and tliat llie 

^ Lac du Saint Sacremcnt (Lake of the Holy Sacrament), a Freneh name 
given it by the Jesuit Missionary, Father Isaac Jogues, on the festival of Corpus 
Christi, in May, 1646. The south end of the Great Carrying Place, now known 
as Fort Edward, is fifty-six miles from Albany. 



i82 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay be urged to 
divert the attention of the French by sending a force of five 
hundred troops down the Chaudiere River, toward Quebec, 
to menace the enemy's outposts on it. 

The commanding general, in reporting the operations of 
the army at the Great Carrying Place, wrote, on the twenty- 
fourth of August, that "the road is now making from this 
place to Lake St. Sacrament, where I propose to build maga- 
zines and raise a defensible fortification, either as a safe 
retreat in case we should find the enemy too strong for our 
force, and be obliged to quit our ground, or upon well- 
grounded intelligence find it the most prudent measure to 
halt there till we receive reinforcements." He remarks 
further: " I propose to march to-morrow or next day with 
the first division of about fifteen hundred men, and some 
Indians, and a few field pieces." Having gone into camp 
at the head of the lake, he had a considerable compass of 
woodland there cleared under the supervision of Colonel 
Ephraim Williams, who, while at Albany, had made his will, 
with provisions for the establishment of a school, which 
later became Williams College. 

In a letter to the Lords of Trade, dated at Lake George 
the third of September, General Johnson particularizes cer- 
tain undertakings connected with the advance of his army : 

" About 250 Indians have already joined me, and as small 
i:)arties are every day dropping in, I expect, before I can be 
able to leave this place, to have 300. . . . Our In- 
dians appear to be very sincere and zealous in our cause, 
and their young men can hardly be withheld from going out 
scalping. ... 

" I am building a fort at this lake, which the French call 
Lake St. Sacrament, but I have given it the name of Lake 
George, not only in honour of His Majesty but to assertain 
his undoubted dominion here. 

" I found it a mere wilderness, not one foot cleared. I 
have made a good Waggon Road to it from Albany, dis- 



EDSONS IN ENCxLAND AND AMERICA 183 

tance about 70 miles; never was house or fort erected here 
before. We have cleared land enough to encani]) 5000 Men. 
The Troops now under my command and the reinforce- 
ments on the way will amount to near that number. Thro' 
our whole march from Albany, tho' parties of the French 
have been hovering round us, we have had but one man 
scalped and one taken prisoner. 

" When the battoes (certain small boats so called) are 
brought from the last fort, caused to be built at the great 
carrying place, abt. 17 miles from hence, I propose with a 
part of the Troops to proceed down the Lake, at the end 
whereof is an important pass called Tionderogue [Ticon- 
deroga], about 50 miles from hence, and 15 miles from Crown 
point, and there endeavor to take post till the rest of the 
Forces join me, and then march to the attack of Crown 
point, all which I hope to effect in about three weeks." 

At that time about a thousand French veterans from 
France and two thousand Canadians and Indians were at 
no great distance from the English army. Baron Ludwig 
August de Dieskau, commanding the French forces, had, on 
the second of September, reached the lower waterfall of the 
outlet of Lake George, on the west side of Lake Champlain. 
On the fourth, as ordered by him, M. de St. Pierre advanced 
southward with a force of Canadians and Indians as far as 
the great marsh, near the site of Whitehall. Leaving 
eighteen hundred of his men at Ticonderoga, General de 
Dieskau followed him with a flying corps of six hundred 
Canadians, and as many Indians, besides three hundred 
regulars, including two companies of grenadiers, a detail of 
twelve marines, and a sqviad of artillerymen and bomba- 
diers, and arrived on the fifth, at the head of South Bay, on 
Lake Champlain, not far north of the site of Whitehall, and 
five or more miles east of Lake George. 

On the sixth of September, the Frencli army continued 
its march southward. Scouts that had been sent in ad- 
vance to discover the whereabouts of the EnHish forces 



i84 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

returned that night reporting the rising of thick smoke at 
different i^oints beyond the places at which they had made 
observations. On the seventh, the French troops, still 
preceded by scouts, went forward. That day the reconnoi- 
tring parties which had viewed the surroundings of the re- 
constructed English outpost, named Fort Lyman, in honor 
of Major- General Phineas Lyman, covering a small space 
of ground immediately north of the creek debouching into 
the Hudson, at the site of the village of Fort Edward, re- 
turned with the intelligence that near the fort they had 
seen about fifty tents of the English. General de Dieskau 
thereupon hastened the advance of his troops and that 
night encamped about three miles north of Fort Lyman. 

Early the next morning a bearer of dispatches was seen 
riding rapidly in the direction of the fort. He was at once 
shot at and killed, and the communications that he was to 
deliver being read, were found to contain information dis- 
closing the approach of the French army and cautioning the 
commandant of the fort to be alert and to act on the defen- 
sive. From two prisoners later taken, considerable knowl- 
edge was derived regarding the number and disposition of 
the English troops at the head of Lake George. 

Finding that the Iroquois Indians forming a part of his 
army preferred to turn back and attack the main body of 
the English at the head of Lake George, General de Dieskau 
without delay moved into the road recently constructed by 
Major-General Johnson's troops, and began marching north- 
ward; the French regulars composing the middle column, 
which was flanked by a column of Canadians and a column 
of Indians. 

The intelligence that a body of the enemy had been seen 
a few miles north of Fort Lyman having been brought to 
Major-General Johnson, a council of war was called early on 
the morning of the eighth of September to determine a plan 
for immediate action. It was speedily concluded that 
Colonel Ej^hraim Williams, having command of a thousand 



EDSONS IN ENCxLAND AND AMERICA 185 

provincials, and that Soiengarahtah, known as King Hen- 
drick, the famotis chief of the Mohawks, with two hundred 
of his warriors, should advance upon the French, then sup- 
posed to be in the immediate vicinity of Fort Lyman. 

The new road "followed the course of a ravine extend- 
ing from the head of Lake George nearly due south for a dis- 
tance of several miles. The detachment headed by Colonel 
Williams took this route at nine o'clock in the morning, 
and in consequence of the intelligence received at midnight ' ' 
regarding the presence of the enemy farther southward, less 
precaution was taken to guard against a surprise. "At a 
point about two miles south of the encampment," Colonel 
Williams "halted, and was joined by the detachment of 
Mohawks, who, with their chief, passed to the front, and at 
ten o'clock resumed the march." 

"About one-third of a mile south of Bloody Pond the 
ravine, through which Colonel Williams's detachment pro- 
ceeded, is narrowed by the abrupt shoulder of a hill project- 
ing from the west, while on the east the sharp acclivit}' and 
rugged sides of French Mountain abut the narrow defile." 
There the foe was unexpectedly found in ambush, his pres- 
ence being disclosed by a sudden outburst of savage war- 
whoops and a death-dealing volley of musketr}'. Colonel 
Williams undertook to extricate his provincials from their 
disadvantageous position, but was shot dead while attempt- 
ing the accomplishment of his intention. The command of 
the force having then fallen to Lieutenant-Colonel Whiting, 
that intrepid officer succeeded in making a temporary ralh' 
of the fleeing men . Compelled by the numerical strength of 
the French, he was forced to retreat, " holding the pursuers 
in check by a scattering but well-aimed fire from every cover 
which could be made available." 

The sound of the protracted firing having been heard at 
the encampment at the head of Lake George, hurried ]>rep- 
arations were made to render it defensible, "for as yet no 
line of intrenchments had been llirown uj), nor any cover, 



i86 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

redoubt, rifle-pit or fortification constructed" there. The 
trtmks of trees that had been felled "were hastily piled up 
as a sort of rude breastwork in front, while the flanks and 
rear" of the camp " were protected by seven field pieces and 
two mortars. The roadway was also commanded by four 
large cannon advantageously i30sted. While these disposi- 
tions were making, Lieutenant-Colonel Cole was dispatched 
with three hundred men to the assistance and relief of the 
retreating detachment. He met the flying troops a little 
to the north of Bloody Pond, and checked, by a well-timed 
volley, the pursuing enemy, and covered the retreat of the 
fugitives into the camp." 

In this short but bloody engagement the English sus- 
tained a loss of two hundred and sixteen officers and men 
killed and ninety-six wounded. The French and their 
Indian allies suffered a loss of many killed and wounded. 
Among their dead was M. de St. Pierre. The loss of their 
chief, Soiengarahtah, dismayed so greatly the Mohawks 
that they declined to take part in the later action of that 
day, they having had thirty-eight of their warriors killed 
and twelve wounded. 

Intent upon following up his success, General de Dies- 
kau pressed on at the head of his regulars, who moved 
steadily forward in the narrow roadway, until they halted, 
about half past eleven o'clock, five hundred or less feet from 
the breastwork of the English, from which point they began 
their attack, the Canadians and Indians taking positions 
along the sides of the camp. 

Describing the action that followed, Major-General 
Johnson wrote: "The enemy's fire we received first from 
their regulars in platoons, but it did no great execution, 
being at too great a distance, and our men defended by the 
breastwork. Our artillery then began to play on them, and 
was served under the direction of Captain [WiUiamJEyre, dur- 
ing the whole engagement, in a manner very advantageous 
to his character, and those concerned in the managem.ent of it. 



EDSONS IN ENCxLAND AND AMERICA 187 

"The engagement now became general (ni both sides. 
The French regulars kept their ground and order for some 
time with great resolution and good conduct, but the warm 
and constant fire from our artillery and troops put them 
into disorder; their fire became more scattered and un- 
equal, and the enemy's fire on otir left grew very faint. 
They moved then to the right of our encampment, and 
Colonel Ruggles's, Colonel Williams's, and Colonel Titcomb's 
regiments, where they maintained a very warm fire for near 
an hour, still keeping up their fire on the other parts of our 
line tho' not very strong. The three regiments on the right 
supported the attack very resolutely, and kept a constant 
and strong fire ui)on the enemy. This attack failing, and 
the artillery still pla\'ing along the line, we found their fire 
very weak, with considerable intervals. This was about fotir 
o'clock, when our men and the Indians jimiped over the 
breastwork, pursued the enemy, slatightered numbers, and 
took several prisoners, amongst whom was the Baron de 
Dieskau, the French general of all the regular forces latelv 
arri\'ed from Europe, who was brought to my tent about 
six o'clock, just as a wound I had received [in one of ni}' 
hips] was dressed. The whole engagement and pursuit 
ended about seven o'clock." 

The notable part taken in this action by Colonel Tim- 
oth}' Ruggles's regiment, that included the company in 
which Ebenezer Edson was serving as a |)ri\'ate, reflected 
no little honor upon the officers and men belonging to it. 
Captain Nathaniel Gilbert, commanding the company of 
which Ebenezer Edson was a member, was either killed or 
wounded in the engagement, for from that time Captain 
Nathaniel Blake is recorded as having command of the 
company until January 7, 1756. 

The necessity of reinforcing Major-General Johnson's 
army was imperative at this turn of affairs, and cnhstments 
of men belonging to the mihlia regiments was speedily 
begun in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Obed, the 



i88 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

fourth son of Samuel and Mary Dean Edson, an elder 
brother of Ebenezer, was then a private in Colonel Estees 
Hatch's regiment. An order of Lieutenant-Governor Spen- 
cer Phips, calling for men for reinforcing the army under 
Major-General William Johnson, influenced him to enlist 
out of that regiment on the fifteenth of September into 
Captain Samuel Clark's company, which soon afterward 
departed for its destination — the camp of the English forces 
at the head of Lake George. 

On the sixteenth of September, while waiting for the 
reinforcements sent to him, the wounded commander of the 
expedition against Crown Point wrote: " Our Expedition is 
likely to be extreamly distressed and I fear fatally retarded 
for want of Waggons. The People of the County of Albany 
and the Adjacent Counties hide their Waggons and drive 
away their Horses. Most of the Waggons [wagoners ?] 
taken into this Service have deserted, some [of the] Horses 
are quite jaded, and some few [have been] killed by the 
Enemy, and several [have] run away. Most of our Pro- 
visions are at Albany." 

Perceiving the military advantage of having a defensible 
outpost on the site of the encampment, General Johnson 
employed a part of his army in the construction of one, 
which, on its conipletion, he named Fort William Henry. 
The two brothers, Ebenezer and Obed Edson, were no 
doubt often in the same working parties that were detailed 
from time to time to accomplish the erection of the fort 
thereafter associated with many of the important events of 
the long struggle of the two nations for governmental su- 
premacy in North America. 

Finding it impossible before the beginning of winter to 
provide his army with provisions and munitions, while ad- 
vancing to attack Fort St. Frederic at Crown Point, General 
Johnson concluded, as was determined by a council of war, 
to abandon the project and disband the troops. Leaving 
six hundred men to garrison Fort Wilham Henry, he re- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 189 

turned with the others to Albany, where they dispersed to 
return to their different places of abode. Ebenezer Edson's 
term of service, twenty-eight weeks and four days, having 
ended on the twentieth of November, pri\-ileged him to 
receive an earlier welcome from the Bridgewater people 
than his brother Obed, whose term of service of thirteen 
weeks and two days as a corporal did not terminate until 
the sixteenth of December ; he being allowed two weeks and 
three days' subsistence while travelling from All)any to his 
home. 

Josiah, the eldest son of Colonel Josiah and Ruth Bailey 
Edson, is recorded as serving in September and October, 
1755, as a commissary of musters under a commission of 
Lieutenant-Governor Spencer Phips.' 

The capture of Fort Niagara having been entrusted to 
Governor William Shirley, he, in midsummer began his 
march westward from Albany by moving along the Mohawk 
River from Schenectady — the stream being more or less navi- 
gable by bateaux and canoes — to a portage of four miles to 
Lake Oneida, and thence along the Oswego River flowing 
into Lake Ontario. " He had with him about fifteen hun- 
dred troops, nearly all of them regulars. Fearing that an 
attack might in his absence be made from Frontenac (King- 
ston), on the opposite side [of Lake Ontario], he determined 
to leave two thirds of his force for the security of Oswego 
[at the mouth of the Oswego River], while with the rest, and 
with the necessary siege artillery, he should proceed on the 
lake to Niagara. Heavy rain set in, which delayed the 
movement for three weeks. . . . Meanwhile the Indian 
guides became discouraged; sickness spread in the camp; 



^ .4 Conpendious History of Xcix.- England. Palfrey. Boston and Xcw 
York, 1883. Vol. iv., p]). lyg, 200. 207, 208. — Docuiucntary History of the 
State of New York. \\)\. ii., jip. 682, 693. — Docunicnls Rclati>ig to the Colonial 
History of New York. Vol. vi., pp. 994, 1014, 102 1. — .1 History of the Toi>.'n 
of Qiteensbury in the State of New York. By A. W. Holden. Albany, 1874. 
Pp. 281-298. — Massachusetts Archives. Muster Rolls, in thr t)fiice of the Secre- 
tary- of State, Boston. \'()1. xciii., ]>]>. 193, 231; vol. xci\'., ]ip. 69, 110. 



lyo EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

and in a council of war it was unanimously resolved to put 
off the undertaking to the following year, to build works for 
the security of Oswego and garrison it with seven hundred 
men, and to withdraw the rest of the army into quarters at 
Albany." 

The expedition against several French forts in Nova 
Scotia was assigned to Colonel Monckton of the British 
army; Colonel John Winslow of Massachusetts Bay com- 
manding the provincial troops. The forces set sail about 
the end of Ma}', 1755, from Boston harbor, and arrived off 
the mouth of the Missaquash, at the northern end of Chig- 
necto Bay, where, opposite the English stronghold, Fort St. 
Laurence, on one side of the estuary, stood the French 
fortress, Beausejour. After a short siege, Fort Beausejour 
capitulated. Colonel Winslow, having crossed the narrow 
isthmus to the north shore of the mainland, took possession 
of Fort Gaspereau on Bay Verte. 

About the middle of July, the troops under Lieutenant- 
Governor Lawrence of Nova Scotia, and Colonel Winslow, 
" were divided into four or five bodies, and marched through 
the province to the chief centres of population, which were 
mostly on the western shore. The object in hand was kept 
a dead secret from all but the leading British officers. . . . 
The fifth of September was the day decided upon for action, 
when the officer of each district was to summon all its able- 
bodied men to come and hear the intentions of the King 
towards them. 

"The parish church in most cases was the appointed 
rendezvous, and there the King's orders were read aloud to 
them by the officer in command. These were to the effect 
that all such Acadians as had not already taken the oath 
[of allegiance to King George the Second] were to be shipped 
out of the country with their families ; that their lands and 
stock . . . were [to be] forfeited to the Crown. Their 
money only, and such household goods as there might be 
room for in the ships, they were to be allowed to take. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 191 

" The wretched Acadians were dumbfounded. 
Man}^ refused to believe it. They were, however, prisoners. 
. There was no escaj^e, for outside the churches 
stood the New England soldiery, in their blue uniforms, 
with loaded muskets. 

"The number of Acadians secured on the fifth of Sep- 
tember varied in the several districts. Everywhere, how- 
ever, it was supplemented by forays of the British troops, 
which became no easy matter when the direful news spread 
abroad. ' ' 

The details of this melancholy deportation afford a dis- 
tressing picture of its painful circumstances. "All the 
women and children who so desired could go, and every care 
was taken to keep together not only families but so far as 
possible neighbours. Many did not believe the sentence 
would be actually carried out till the first detachments were 
marched on board ship at the bayonet's point. The whole 
wretched business occupied over two months. About six 
thousand in all were deported, while more than half that 
number were left behind in Acadia, to say nothing of as 
many more who had fled into French territory. 

" The hapless emigrants were distributed throughout the 
English colonies. That people so profoundly ignorant and 
bigoted as the Acadians did not flourish when pitchforked 
thus on alien soil, is not surprising. Nor is it more so by 
the same token that the British colonists tipon whom they 
were unceremoniously precipitated showed no alacrity to 
receive them. 

"At the beginning of winter, a thousand of them were 
brought to Massachusetts, as unexpected as undesired. 
Their removal h£id not been made under colonial authority, 
and there had been no arrangement for their reception and 
maintenance. The General Court, after some delay, passed 
a resolve, permitting them all to be landed, and directing 
them to be distributed among interior towns, there to be 
employed in getting their living under the sui)erinten(kMice 



192 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

of the municipal magistrates. Many elderly and infirm 
people, and such as had been of the wealthier sort, received 
gratuitous support. It was proposed to them to settle in 
a body on some of the province lands, but they refused, 
expecting confidently to be restored to their homes when 
peace should be made. 

"Though their worship with their families, and even in 
larger assemblies, was not interfered with, they were inter- 
dicted from the presence of priests of their persuasion, and 
this, with their feelings, was the last aggravation of misery. 
Some got away to the West Indies; some to Canada, where, 
however, their reception greatly disappointed them; and 
some even as far as the Falkland Islands, by Cape Horn. 
In the desperation of their homesickness a number of those 
who had been conveyed to the southern colonies built boats, 
and in them crept along the coast from Carolina and Georgia 
as far as Massachusetts, where they were stopped in conse- 
quence of a message from the governor of Nova Scotia, who 
had information of their proceeding. These, a hundred in 
number, were, like their friends who had come earlier, dis- 
persed among the towns. , . When peace at length 
took place, some had become reconciled to a permanent resi- 
dence where they were, but most of the survivors, their 
movements being no longer obstructed, removed to Nova 
Scotia or to Canada, where their posterity exists to this day. ' ' 

The town of Bridgewater was too near the seat of gov- 
ernment to escape recognition as an available asylum for 
some of the exiled Acadians, and a number were sent there 
to find employment upon different farms lying within its 
bounds. The stirring events of the year afforded, during 
the following winter, the inhabitants of the town of Bridge- 
water many interesting incidents for review, while curiously 
conjecturing the character of the plans then under consid- 
eration for a renewal of the attempts to get possession of 
the frontier forts of the French. 

Governor William Shirley, having been commissioned 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 193 

by King George the Second commander-in-chief of tlie 
forces in North America, " summoned the governors of all 
the colonies to a conference at New York, but was met 
there by only the governors of Connecticut, New York, 
Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The result of their delibera- 
tions was [the conclusion] that the campaign of the next 
vear ought to proceed upon an enlarged scale ; that no less 
than ten thousand troops should be emjiloyed against 
Crown Point, six thousand against Fort Niagara, and three 
thousand against Fort Duquesne. ... 

" The plan of operations for the next year . . . was 
not cordially received by the General Court of Massachu- 
setts. The expense which it would bring upon that prov- 
ince was said to be of an amount altogether unmanageable. 
The most which the court would consent to do was to raise 
the province's quota of men, if the governor would make 
present provision of money sufficient for the pay of the 
soldiers who had been in the field the last year, and for 
bounties for the enlistment now contemplated. The gov- 
ernor acceded to the proposal so far as to lend the province 
thirty thousand potinds of the King's money deposited with 
him as commander-in-chief — the loan to be reimbursed 
from any allowance which should be made by Parliament, 
or, failing such allowance, from the avails of colonial taxes 
to be laid and collected in the next two years. On the 
strength of this arrangement, the province voted to raise 
thirty-five hundred men for service against Crown Point." 

The Earl of Loudon having been commissioned, in Ma)', 
1756, to succeed Governor Shirley as commander-in-chief, 
did not arrive at Albany until the beginning of August, 
where he received intelligence of the capitulation, on the 
thirteenth of that month, of the fort at Oswego to the 
French, which caused him to arrest the operations in prog- 
ress for an attack on Crown Point, and, as a consequence, 
nothing of any adwmtage to the English resulted from the 

campaign of 1756. 
13 



194 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

The campaign of 1757 was opened by the commander-in- 
chief, Lord Loudon, who, on the twentieth of June, set sail 
from the bay of New York with six thousand men to make 
a descent on Louisburg, with the aid of the Enghsh fleet, to 
arrive at Hahfax on the ninth of July. Learning there that 
the French were protecting Louisburg with " seventeen 
line-of -battle ships, and a force of regulars more than half 
as great as his own, he lost no time in returning to New 
York." 

Meanwhile, the Marquis de Montcalm, who had suc- 
ceeded Baron de Dieskau in command of the French forces 
in North America, suddenly attacked, with more than eight 
thousand men, including two thousand Indian allies, on the 
fourth of August, Fort William Henry, then garrisoned by 
two thousand five hundred troops under Colonel Monro. 
The fort was bravely defended until the ammunition in its 
magazines began to fail, and all hope was gone of success- 
fully resisting much longer the assaults of the beleaguering 
enemy. By the articles of capitulation, signed on the ninth 
of August, the provincials were allowed to march out with 
their firearms and no cartridges, having promised not to 
serve against the French within the space of eighteen 
months from the day of surrender. 

"The morning after the capitulation was signed," says 
Captain Carver of the Connecticut troops, " as soon as day 
broke, the whole garrison, now consisting of about two 
thousand men, besides women and children, were drawn up 
within the lines, and on the point of marching off, when 
great numbers of the Indians gathered about and began to 
plunder. We were at first in hopes that this was their only 
view, and suffered them to proceed without opposition. 
Indeed, it was not in our power to make any, had we been 
so inclined; for though we were permitted to carry off our 
arms, yet we were not allowed a single round of ammuni- 
tion. In these hopes, however, we were disappointed; for 
frequently some of them began to attack the sick and 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 195 

wounded, when such as were not al^le to crawl into the 
ranks, notwithstanding they endeavored to avert the fury 
of their enemies by their shrieks or groans, were soon dis- 
patched." 

" The little army then began their march toward Fort 
Edward according to the terms of capitulation, but they 
looked in vain for the escort of French troops to protect 
them. Dense masses of dusky savages hung about, exas- 
perated and disappointed, for they had been promised plun- 
der and revenge by the French. The prize seemed slipping 
from them ; they grew bold, and the blood and cries of the 
few wounded served only to madden them ; they began to 
plunder on the skirts of the army, and then all restraint, 
all fear, were abandoned; the whole body of Indians threw 
themselves, tomahawk in hand, shouting the war-whoop, 
upon the defenceless men. Colonel Monro and some others 
were able to get back to the French lines, where they vainly 
tried to have a guard sent, to keep off the savages, 

" Through the whole day, the carnage and plunder went 
on, and the Indians rioted in destruction. The troops had 
no ammunition, they had no leaders — every man was for 
himself; they broke up into small bodies, trying to escape; 
here and there individuals fled and concealed themselves in 
the bushes ; many of whom perished with hunger and fatigue, 
before reaching a place of succor. Numbers of the whites 
were carried away captives, of whom few ever came back. 
It is computed that one thousand five hundred persons 
were this day either murdered, carried off, or lost in the 
forests. One by one the survivors dropped in upon the out- 
lying plantations with their story of horror, and the hearts 
of men were palsied. 

" There is absolutely nothing to be said in defence of the 
French in this affair. That thc\' did not dare to run the 
rivsk of oftY^nding and alienating thcM'r Indians is, of C(mrse, 
the cx])lanati()n, thougli surely no extenuation of such 
ignoble conduct. It is one of the worst stains upon the 



196 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

annals of their arms in America. They would have been 
bound by humanity only in the storming of a fort, but after 
a formal capitulation, they were bound not merely by 
humanity, but by the most elementary rule of military 
honour, and it is satisfactory to think that they paid dearly 
for it. The British Government, as a matter of course, re- 
pudiated their part of the contract, and not a French pris- 
oner was sent to Montreal, nor was the parole of the garrison 
taken any account of. The memory of the massacre drove 
many a bayonet home in the coming years of British suc- 
cess that might otherwise have been stayed in mercy, and 
many a Canadian sued in vain for his life at the hands of 
the New England Ranger who might formerly have been 
spared. 'Remember Fort William Henry' became a terrible 
war-cry in many a battle and in many a bloody backwoods' 
skirmish. The French knew it well and felt that it added 
a fresh terror to defeat. The first impulse of a disarmed or 
captured Canadian was to protest by voice and gesture that 
he had not been present at that accursed scene. 

" The growing scarcity of food in Canada saved the forts 
on the Hudson, and, probably, the flourishing town of Albany 
itself, from being captured and sacked by the French. Word 
was sent that it was of the first necessity that the now 
ripening harvest should be gathered, and there were not 
men to do it. So the French turned their attention to the 
destruction of the British fort and all its dependent build- 
ings. Great bonfires were made of the logs foi'ming the 
ramparts, and into them were cast those bodies of the dead 
which had not been buried. As a fortress the place ceased 
to exist. 

"It was a gloomy enough winter, this one of 1757-58, 
in the British provinces. ... It was the lowest point 
ever touched by Anglo-Saxon fortunes in America. Oswego 
and William Henry were scenes of desolation; Louisburg 
was contemptuous and defiant behind bristling rows of 
cannon and massive ramparts; the colonists even of New 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 197 

England were disheartened and disillusioned as to the in- 
vincibility of British troops, and sore both with their gen- 
erals and their officers. The frontiers of the more southern 
colonies still ran with blood, and the labours of a generation 
on a belt of country nearly four hundred miles in length had 
been swept away." Washington, who had "been over two 
years at the frontier village of Winchester, in the valley of 
Virginia, eating his heart out in vain endeavours to stem the 
hordes of Indians led by Frenchmen, who swarmed across 
the stricken borders of the middle colonies," had written, in 
the spring of 1757, of his inability, for want of adequate 
support, to defend them, declaring: "I have been posted 
for more than twenty months on our cold and barren fron- 
tiers to perform, I think I may say, an impossibility; that 
is, to protect from the cruel incursions of a crafty savage 
enemy a line of inhabitants more than three hundred and 
fifty miles in extent, with a force inadec[uate to the task." 
" Nothing," he asserts, " keeps me from resignation but the 
imminent danger to my country. The supplicating tears of 
the women and the moving petitions of the men melt me 
into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know 
my own mind, I could offer miyself a willing sacrifice to the 
butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the 
people's ease." 

" Great Britain was sunk in despondency. Chesterfield 
declared we were 'no longer a nation.'" William Pitt, the 
leader of the British Ministry, "appealed with impassioned 
fervour to the heart of England, and by a genius, unequalled 
in its history, . . . brought an apparenth' half-mori- 
bund nation into an ecstacy of patriotic ardour. Everv 
one who approached the great statesman caught the in- 
spiration, and ever)' man in England who had a heart at all 
felt the blood coursing more briskly through it. Those 
whom Pitt called especiall>' to serve him and maintain the 
nation's honour went to the camp or to the wilderness with 
an enthusiasm for their chief and country, and a sense of 



198 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

exhilaration that had for long been almost wholly lacking." 
The campaign of 1758 embraced attacks on Louisburg, 
Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, and Fort St. Frederic at 
Crown Point, and Fort Duquesne. General Jeffrey Am- 
herst, having under him Brigadiers James Wolfe, Lawrence, 
and Whitmore, and co-operated with by Admiral Boscawen, 
was assigned the task of obtaining possession of Louisburg. 
On the twenty-eighth of May, Amherst arrived at Halifax, 
the fleet consisting of twenty-two ships of the line and fif- 
teen frigates, the army of ten thousand men. The light- 
house battery on the northeast side of the entrance to the 
harbor of Louisburg was taken by Wolfe on the morning of 
the twelfth of June. On the twenty-third, the English bat- 
tery began firing upon that of the French on the island 
lying near the middle of the entrance to the harbor. Three 
of the French ships were burned on the twenty-first of July 
by the English, and on the night of the twenty-fifth, an- 
other. Louisburg was then "a heap of ruins." On the 
twenty-sixth the place capitulated. Five thousand six hun- 
dred and thirty-seven prisoners fell into the hands of the 
English, as also two hundred and forty cannon and mortars, 
and a great quantity of ammunition. 

The appeal made by the great English commoner, Wil- 
liam Pitt, to the Northern colonies, including New York and 
New Jersey, for a force of twenty thousand men for the 
reduction of Canada, was promptly answered by their put- 
ting into the field 17,480 men, 7,000 of whom were furnished 
by the Province of Massachusetts. Among the towns rep- 
resented by companies organized under this call was Bridge- 
water, which early in the spring began forming one, having 
for its officers: Simeon Gary, captain; Lemuel Dunbar, ist 
lieutenant; Josiah, the eldest son of Josiah and Sarah Pack- 
ard Edson, 2d lieutenant, who entered into the service of 
King George the Second on March 13, 1758. The two 
brothers, Joseph and Daniel Edson, the first and third sons 
of Joseph and Lydia Gary Edson, severally enlisted as 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 199 

"centinels " on the eleventh and fourteenth of April. The 
company was mustered into Colonel Thomas Doty's regi- 
ment of Plymouth County provincials, which marched to 
Albany for incorporation in June, with the army collected 
there by Major-General James Abercrombie, commander of 
King George's forces in North America. The entire force 
embraced six thousand three hundred English regulars and 
nine thousand provincials, including bateaux men. On the 
eighth of June, Lord George Howe, with one half of the 
army, reached Fort Edward, where not long afterward 
the commander-in-chief, with the remainder, arrived. 

On the fifth of July, the entire army embarked at the 
head of Lake George to pass northward to the landing 
place at the navigable end of it. " On this memorable July 
morning twelve hundred boats, laden with troops and muni- 
tions of war, stretched like a vast armada across the bosom 
of the lake. The summer dawn was brilliant and cloudless. 
The sun had just risen over the mountain tops, and chased 
away the mists that night had gathered along the swampy 
shores. Not a breath of air was stirring on the water, not 
a ripple ruffling the silver sheen of its surface ; nor from that 
illimitable sea of woodland, which swept upwards in suc- 
cessive waves from the island-studded shores, came breeze 
enough to move a blossom or a leaf. With regular preci- 
sion, its wings stretching to right and left, and as the nar- 
row lake grew narrower, reaching almost from bank to 
bank, the splendid pageant swept slowly northward. In 
the centre were the British regiments, all gay in scarlet and 
white and gold. Upon the right and left and in the rear 
went the colonial troops, in blue and red. In front was 
the gallant Bradstreet, with his sailors and axemen, in 
soberer guise; and Gage's light infantry, with their strange 
caps and short jackets and moustachioed faces. 

" From the whole dense flotilla come the Hint and Hash 
of burnished arms, and above the boats, at intervals, hunir 
the standards of famous regiments, impatient to inscribe 



200 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

some American triumph on their folds, while the brave show 
of over a thousand tartans — those of the ' Black Watch' — ■ 
filled in the picture. Ten thousand oars, with measured 
beat, caught the sunlight, and the bands of various regi- 
ments, with their martial music, woke the echoes of the 
mountains, which, as the lake narrowed, lifted high above 
it, upon either hand, their leafy sides and rocky crests." 

The British and American forces disembarked on the fol- 
lowing morning at the foot of Lake George without meeting 
there any opposing body of French and Indians. Having 
left a strong guard with the bateaux, the commander-in- 
chief ordered Lord Howe to go forward with his rangers 
and light infantry, while he with the other troops followed; 
the English regulars in the centre and the provincials on 
the flanks. It was not long before Lord Howe, in penetrat- 
ing a wild waste of fallen timber and thick underbrush, 
came suddenly upon a small body of the enemy, whereupon 
a sharp skirmish ensued. In eagerly advancing upon the 
discovered position of the foe, Lord Howe was killed by 
being shot through the heart. That night the army biv- 
ouacked in the woods, and on the following morning re- 
turned to the landing place. 

On the north side of the outlet of Lake George, running 
first northward about two miles and then southeastward 
about the same distance before entering Lake Champlain, 
stood Fort Carillon, having Lake Champlain on its east side, 
and on the south, the bay formed by the confluent waters 
of the outlet, the lake, and Wood Creek. At the north of 
the fort was a wide stretch of marshy meadows; the only 
land-approach to it being from the northwest. 

Aware of the intention of the British general, the French 
commandant of Fort Carillon, the Marquis de Montcalm, 
immediately began obstructing the land passage to it. " On 
the morning of the eighth, the drums of the French beat to 
arms, that the troops, now thirty-six hundred and fifty in 
number, might know their stations, and then they resumed 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 201 

their work; the right of their defences rested on a hillock, 
from which the ])lain between the lines and the lake was 
to have been flanked by four pieces of cannon; but the 
battery could not be finished; the left extended to a scarp 
surmounted by an abattis. For a hundred yards in front 
of the intermediate breastwork, which consisted of piles of 
logs, the approach was obstructed by felled trees with their 
branches pointing outwards, stumps, and rubbish of all 
sorts." 

Leaving the most of his artillery at the landing place. 
General Abercrombie, on the evening of the seventh of July, 
again advanced northward, bivouacking for the night about 
two miles distant from Fort Carillon. The next morning, 
having received information that the formidable breast- 
work could be carried by assault, he decided to force his 
way beyond it at the point of the bayonet. But this was a 
most senseless blunder, for it is said had he made use of his 
artillery from a neighboring eminence, " he could then have 
pounded the huddling mass of Frenchmen within the en- 
trenchment at will, or knocked their defences about their 
ears in an hour ; for they were not strong enough to venture 
an attack. They had only a week's provisions, and were 
nearly two hundred miles from their base. Even if no ar- 
tillery had been available, the British general, with his 
fifteen thousand men, could have surrounded them, and 
starved them out without firing a shot. 

" Forcing their way through the tangled chaos of tum- 
bled trees, the front lines of British infantry pressed on as 
best they could, with orders to carry by steel alone those 
bristling barriers behind which over three thousand French- 
men lay invisible and secure, with levelled muskets. As 
the British approached the abattis, a sheet of flame and 
smoke burst from the eight foot log breastwork which lay 
behind it, and a fierce storm of l:)ullets, mixed with grape- 
shot, swept through the advancing ranks. In vain the sur- 
vivors of that withering discharge tried to force their way 



202 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

through the dense network of opposing boughs and reach 
the foot of the wooden wall beyond. 

"The order to withhold their fire, however, was soon 
treated by the troops with the contempt which, under the 
circumstances, it deserved; but this availed them little. 
. Regiment after regiment struggled desperately on 
against that fatal barrier; but as each rush of men strove 
to tear their way through the immovable frise of branches, 
it was met by a storm of lead, such as no troops could face 
and live. As each shattered column fell sullenly back, 
leaving a fearful tribute of dead and wounded, fresh ones 
came rolling on like the waves of the sea, and to break as 
surely at the foot of that flaming parapet. Thus went on 
the futile heroism and the useless slaughter. 

" Now and again there was a lull, born of sheer exhaus- 
tion, the smoke lifted from the deadly clearing, and men 
may well have looked for some word from their sphinx-like 
general; but Abercrombie gave no sign, except, with im- 
perturbable fatuity, to persist in his mad course. Fresh 
troops were ordered forward, and with them returned to 
the charge the survivors of the last attacks. There was 
no sign of hesitation throughout the whole of those terrible 
four hours, and never was greater gallantry shown in an 
effort so lamentably superfluous. 

" ' It was in vain at last,' says Warburton, ' as it was at 
first ; and upon that rude barrier, which the simplest ma- 
noeuvres would have avoided, or an hour of well-plied artil- 
lery swept away, the flower of British chivalry was crushed 
and broken. ' 

" ' The scene was frightful, ' writes Parkman ; ' masses of 
infuriated men, who could not go forward and would not 
go back, straining for an enemy they could not reach, and 
firing at an enemy they could not see. ' 

" It was five o'clock, and nearly four hours of this insen- 
sate work had not daunted the spirit of these gallant men. 
For it was at this moment that the most furious onslaught 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 203 

of the whole day was made upon the French right. Then, 
and then only for a few brief minutes, was Montcalm's 
position in danger, and he had to hurry in person with a 
strong support to where a group of Highlanders, with su- 
perb indifference to death, were making their way up and 
over the parapet. But the gallant effort was fruitless. 
One or two more half-hearted and despairing at- 
tempts were made upon the deadly lines, when the com- 
manding general, recognising at six o'clock what he should 
have seen at one, gave the order to retire. 

"There were some other incidents in the battle, but 
they pale into insignificance compared with the sustained 
frontal attack. The strips of densely wooded swamp on 
either side of the entrenchment were guarded by Canadians 
and Indians, and Abercrombie 's provincials made several 
futile attempts to dislodge them. Bradstreet, too, had 
brought some bateaux overland from Lake George, and 
these were filled with riflemen and floated on the river [or 
outlet], on the flank of the French position, but cannon were 
brought [by the wary defenders] to bear on the crowded 
boats, to their complete discomfiture, two or three of them 
being actually sunk. 

" The cost of the errors of the commander of the British 
and provincial forces was frightful. Very nearly two thou- 
sand men had fallen in a short quarter of a summer da\% 
and the greater part of these were of the six thousand regu- 
lars, who had borne the chief part of the assault. Three 
hundred provincials only figure in the returns [of the sus- 
tained losses]; but no half-disciplined militia, without bayo- 
nets, however brave, could have been launched upon a task 
so obviously hopeless, 

" 'Had I to besiege Fort Carillon,' said Montcalm, 'I 
would ask for but six mortars and two pieces of artillery. ' 
But Abercrombie, a victim to the 'extremest fright and 
consternation,' hurried the army that same evening to the 
Landing Place, with such precipitancy that, but for the 



204 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

alertness of Bradstreet, it would, at once, in a mass, have 
rushed into the boats. On the morning of the ninth, he 
embarked, and did not rest till he had placed the lake be- 
tween himself and Montcalm. Even then he sent artillery 
and ammunition to Albany for safety." 

" Such was Ticonderoga, the least remembered though 
one of the bloodiest, most desperate, and most dramatic 
battles in English history, at once a glory and a shame." 

The capture of Fort Frontenac, at the outlet of Lake 
Ontario, then an important way-station between Montreal 
and the western forts of the French, had for some time been 
occupying the thoughts of Colonel John Bradstreet. The 
disastrous turn of affairs at Ticonderoga emboldened him 
to solicit the command of a force adequate to accomplish 
the project, which to him seemed feasible. The unsuccess- 
ful commander-in-chief, conceiving that his urgent subor- 
dinate might be able to dispossess the French of that depot 
of supplies, then known to be garrisoned by a small body 
of men, consented to his making the attempt. He there- 
upon put under his command three thousand troops, all of 
them provincials except two hundred regulars, three hun- 
dred bateaux men, and seventy Indians. 

About the middle of August, the expeditionary force 
began its toilsome advance through the Mohawk Valley. 
At the Oneida Carrying Place, they found General John 
Stanwix busily engaged in constructing the fort that for 
many years bore his surname. On the twenty-second of 
August, the little army encamped on the site of Oswego, 
overlooking Lake Ontario. Although his force was greatly 
decimated by sickness, the resolute New England officer 
wrote to General Abercrombie that if he had only a thou- 
sand men fit for duty he would still persist in carrying out 
his undertaking. 

" Launching his bateaux and whaleboats upon the lake, 
he in four days landed his men and guns within sight of 
Fort Frontenac, and on the following morning mounted a 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 205 

battery within point-blank range of its walls, and had the 
garrison at his mercy, . . . Resistance was hopeless, as 
a few discharges of artillery soon made it evident. There 
were onlv a hundred men in the fort, with their women and 
children, and they promptly surrendered," on the twenty- 
seventh of August. 

" The bootv taken and destroyed at Frontenac was very 
great, and the loss to the French, they themselves declared, 
was worse than that of a battle. There were nine vessels, 
carrying over a hundred guns, most of which were burned, 
together with the fort itself, and everything inside it that 
could not be moved. Sixty pieces of artillery were carried 
away, besides an immense amount of valuable furs, stores, 
and provisions, valued at nearly a million livres. Bradstreet, 
to crown the honour of his achievement, refused any share 
in the booty, his portion being divided among his troops." 

In midsummer, reports of the weakness of Fort Duquesne 
having been received. Brigadier John Forbes, a distin- 
guished officer in the British army, having been furnished 
with a body of provincials numbering about four thousand 
two hundred men, provided by the provinces of Pennsyl- 
vania, Maryland, and Virginia, and several regiments of 
English regulars, probably representing two thousand, set 
out in August, through Pennsylvania, for the 'interior fort 
west of the AUeghanies. Adverse circumstances delayed 
his arrival there until late in November. During the last 
stages of the advance of his troops upon Fort Duquesne, 
"the army moved in three divisions with caution and in 
open order, guided through the thick forest by the monoto- 
nous tapping of their own drums, which were beat with- 
out ceasing at the head of each company. Thinly clad, 
and with a single blanket to cover them at night, the men 
pressed cheerily forward through the mysterious mazes 
of the woods, till on the twenty-third of November the 
guides had brought them within twelve miles of the fort. 
Here the unexpected news was received that it had been 



2o6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

abandoned. They halted a day to confirm the report, and 
on the twenty-fifth moved forward to find the backwoods 
fortress, so long the curse of British America, standing silent 
and deserted amid a fringe of fire-scorched ruins. . . . 
Thus fell, without a protest from rifle or cannon, the very 
stronghold and hope of French empire in the West, and the 
scourge of the British frontier. 

*' It now only remained to make the fort good for the 
reception of a winter garrison, and to rename it. . . . 
A new and suitable name for the conquered fortress was 
not hard to find, and Duquesne became Fort Pitt, after the 
great minister, whose spirit had here, as everywhere, been 
the source of British triumph." 

The service of Lieutenant Josiah Edson, in the army 
commanded by Major-General Abercrombie, eight months 
and four days, terminated on the twenty-sixth of October, 
1758, on his arriving home — sixteen days having been al- 
lowed him for travelling to it. Joseph Edson 's service, under 
the same commander, ended also with his return home on 
the twenty-ninth of September, having been honorably dis- 
charged on the thirteenth, and allowed sixteen days for 
travelling to Bridgewater. His brother Daniel, who had 
also taken part in the assault upon Fort Carillon, received 
his discharge on the ninth of September, and was likewise 
allowed sixteen days for reaching home. It is highly prob- 
able that these three members of the Edson Family had also 
been with the force of provincials sent against Fort Fronte- 
nac under Colonel John Bradstreet.' 



^ A Compendious History of New England. Palfrey. Boston and New 
York, 1883. Vol. iv., pp. 214, 215, 216, 220, 221, 222, 223, 229. — The Fight With 
France for North America. By A. G. Bradley. New York, 18 — . f-Pp. 128, 
129, 130, 197, 198, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 242, 243, 247, 248, 249, 250, 
251. 252, 253, 257, 263, 264, 265, 266, 268, 269, 282, 283. — The New England 
History. By Charles W. Elliott. In two vols. New York, 1857. Vol. ii., 
pp. 104, 105. — History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, 
1852. Vol. iv., pp. 304, 306. — Massachusetts Archives. Muster Rolls, in the 
office of the Secretary of State, Boston. Vol. xcvi., pp. 148, 355, 520. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 207 

The possession of North America had now become the 
supreme object of Great Britain. " With astonishing una- 
nimity, Parliament voted for the year 1759 twelve millions 
sterling, and such forces, by sea and land, as till those days 
had been unimagined in England. 'This is Pitt's doing,' 
said Chesterfield, ' and it is marvellous in our eyes. He 
declares only what he would have them do, and they do 
it.' " 

" In America success depended upon union. The Board 
of Trade was compelled to adjourn questions of internal 
authority ; while Pitt won the free services of the Americans 
by respecting their liberties and alleviating their excessive 
burdens from the British exchequer. Every colony north 
of Maryland seconded his zeal. The military spirit espe- 
cially pervaded New York and all New England, so that 
there was not one of their villages but grew familiar with 
war from the experience of its own people. Massachusetts, 
though it was gasping under the fruitless efforts of former 
years, sent into the field, to the frontier, and to the garri- 
sons, more than seven thousand men, or nearly one sixth 
part of all who were able to bear arms. . . . The whole 
continent was exerting its utmost strength, and eager to 
prove its loyalty." 

Three purposes determined the initial movements of 
the British and provincial forces at the beginning of the 
campaign: Brigadier-General James Wolfe to ascend the 
St. Lawrence River, and, aided by a fleet, attack Quebec; 
Major-General Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of the 
British forces in North America, to undertake the capture 
of Fort Carillon and Fort St. Frederic; and Brigadier- 
General John Prideaux to attempt the reduction of Fort 
Niagara. 

Albany became the point for the concentration of the 
troops which Sir Jeffre}" Amherst and Brigadier-General 
Prideaux were to lead against the three strongholds of the 
enemy. In July, the army to operate along the west side 



2o8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

of Lake Champlain began marching northward. On the 
twenty-third of July, Amherst, having six thousand regu- 
lars and nearly five thousand provincials, reached Ticonder- 
oga, and found the undestroyed redoubt, that had been 
the scene of the bloody assault of the preceding year, aban- 
doned. Although the British general began at once making 
preparations to besiege the stone fortress then held by a 
French force of nearly four thousand men. General de Bour- 
lamaque, on the night of the twenty-sixth, quietly embarked 
its garrison to retire to Fort St. Frederic. "After the last 
man had left, a dull roar, followed by a loud explosion, 
burst on the summer night as a part of the masonry of the 
fort was hurled skywards. Sheets of flame flared from the 
debris, making a grand and weird spectacle, while against 
the light of the flames the abandoned French flag was seen 
streaming in the wind. A sergeant, with four privates, 
rushed forward and achieved the perilous task of snatching 
the trophy from the blazing building. Thus dramatically 
fell Ticonderoga, for years the armed gate of Canada, the 
barrier to invading armies, and the scourge of the northern 
frontiers as Duquesne had been to those of the lower colo- 
nies." 

On reaching Crown Point, on the fourth of August, Am- 
herst found Fort St. Frederic partly destroyed and aban- 
doned. Writing from there on the eighth, he says : Here " I 
propose building such a stronghold as shall most effectually 
cover and secure all this country. ' ' 

The enthusiastic commander-in-chief was delighted to 
get, on his arrival at Crown Point, the intelligence of the 
fall of Fort Niagara, of which he wrote on the eighth of 
Augtist : 

"The night of my arrival here I received letters from 
Sir William Johnson, with the. additional good news of the 
success of his Majesty's amis at Niagara, which surrendered, 
by capitulation, on the twenty-fifth [of July] to Sir William 
Johnson, upon whom the command had devolved by the 



t 
i 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 209 

demise of poor Brigcidier-General Prideaux, killed in the 
trenches on the night of the twentieth. The garrison con- 
sisting of six hundred and seven men, being prisoners of war, 
are now on their march to New York, together with seven- 
teen officers and one hundred and sixty men more, part of 
a cor]3s of twelve hundred assembled at Detroit, Venango, 
and Presqu' Isle under the command of Messrs. Aubry and 
Delignery, for raising the siege, . but Sir William Johnson, 
having intelligence of their approach, provided so properly 
for their reception that, on the morning of the twenty- 
fourth w^hen the\' meant to march straight to the fort, they 
met with such an opposition as they little expected, being 
entirely routed with the loss of all their officers, and a great 
number of their men killed, whilst the loss on our side is 
inconsiderable." 

In March, 1759, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, having by dis- 
patches from England been informed that Cape Breton 
Island had been designated for the rendezvous of the troops 
being sent from England, "for the expedition against 
Quebec, tinder the direction of Brigadier- General Wolfe, 
whom the king had appointed for that service," and who 
w^as " to have the rank of major-general for the expedition 
only," wrote, on the sixteenth, to Brigadier-General Charles 
Lawrence, Governor of Nova Scotia, instructing him to be 
prepared to embark the forces under his command as soon 
as the transports, which he (Sir Jeft'rey) had hired at Boston, 
New York, and Philadelphia, should arrive at Halifax, for 
fear that those which had been ordered from England might 
not reach there in due time. 

The circumspect commander-in-chief, recognizing the 

tirgency of the orders received by him, adds: "I have 

WTitten to Governor [Thomas] Pownell [of the Province of 

Massachusetts Bay] for fifteen hundred provincials to joyn 

the five hundred that will be detached from Monckton's 

and Lawrence's battalions for the ])rotection of Halifax, 

Nova Scotia, and the Ba>- of Fundy, and that there may 
14 



2IO EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

be no loss of time I shall order the provincials to be embarked 
at Boston, and to proceed directly to the different garrisons 
in the Bay of Fundy." 

The fall of Louisburg in 1758 afforded the British the 
use of it as a base of supph^ during the operations of the 
land and naval forces sent to take Quebec. At the begin- 
ning of the campaign of 1759, both Louisburg and Halifax 
were garrisoned by troops destined to be incorporated with 
the forces intended for the taking of Quebec, as is disclosed 
by the instructions of Sir Jeffrey Amherst to Brigadier- 
General Lawrence, Governor of Nova Scotia, concerning 
the filling of their places with the fifteen hundred provin- 
cials ordered to go on the transports hired by the com- 
mander-in-chief to convey them to Halifax and Louisburg, 
and to points in Nova Scotia, and along the Bay of Fundy, 
which might be attacked by French forces dispatched from 
France. 

The harbor of Boston was at that time guarded by a 
fortification bearing the name of Castle William, and by 
two lesser works, known as the North Battery and the 
South Battery. They were also to be provided with de- 
tachments of provincials to substitute such regulars as had 
been holding them. 

The four brothers, Samuel, Abel, Obed, and Ebenezer, 
sons of Samuel and Mary Dean Edson, loyally responded 
to the call for troops for the invasion of Canada ; the first 
three named becoming members of Captain Lemuel Dun- 
bar's company, in Colonel John Thomas's regiment, and the 
last in Captain James Reed's company in the same regiment. 
Obed Edson enlisted on the thirtieth of March, 1759, 
Ebenezer on the second of April, and Samuel and Abel on 
the sixth. As recorded, Ebenezer Edson was at Castle 
William on the seventh of June, and served until the 
thirtieth of November. The other three brothers— Obed 
being a corporal and later promoted to the position of 
sergeant — were sent with the company to Halifax, where ' 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 211 

they were on garrison duty until honorably discharged on 
the first of November. 

Daniel, the third son of Joseph and Lydia Gary Edson, 
was also a member of Gaptain Lemuel Dunbar's company, 
having enlisted on the second of April, and served until 
the first of November. 

In a communication addressed b}' the commander-in- 
chief to Governor Lawrence, from New York, on the four- 
teenth of April, Sir Jeffrey Amherst advised him, saying: 
" I have ordered that all the provincials allotted for Louis- 
burg and Nova Scotia should be provided with arms, which 
they will be before they embark at Boston." He adds: 
" I am greatly pleased with your resolutions for building a 
lighthouse; the temporary one may save the lives of some 
poor souls until the new one can be finished; this and the 
yard for the navy, tell me that Halifax will flourish, the 
thoughts of which are very agreeable to me." He further 
remarks: "I have directed the transport vessels shall sail 
directly from hence for Halifax as soon as they ari'ive here 
and can be ready to go." 

On the twenty-sixth of June, the British fleet and forces 
arrived off the Isle of Orleans abotit three and a half miles 
east of the city of Quebec, and on the following day disem- 
barked. " A little south of west, the cliff of Quebec was 
seen distinctly, seemingly impregnable, rising precipitously 
in one of the grandest scenes in nature. To protect this 
guardian citadel of New France, Montcalm had of regular 
troops no more than six wasted battalions; of Indian war- 
riors few appeared, the wary savages preferring the security 
of neutrals ; the Canadian militia gave him the superiority 
in numbers; but he put his chief confidence in the natural 
strength of the country. Above Quebec, the high prom- 
ontory on which the u])])er town is l)uilt expands into an 
elevated plain, having towards the river the steepest ac- 
clivities. ... 

"As Wolfe disembarked on the Isle of Orleans, what 



212 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

scene could be more imposing? On his left lay at anchor 
the fleet with the numerous transports; the tents of the 
army stretched across the island; the intrenched troops of 
France, having their centre at the village of Beauport, ex- 
tended from the Montmorenci to the St. Charles; the city 
of Quebec bounded the horizon. 

"Wolfe was eager for battle; being willing to risk all 
his hopes on the issue. He saw that the eastern bank of the 
Montmorenci was higher than the ground occupied by Mont- 
calm, and, on the ninth of July, he crossed the north channel 
[of the St. Lawrence] and encamped there, but the armies and 
their chiefs were divided by the [Montmorenci] river precipi- 
tating itself down its rocky wa}' in impassable eddies and 
rapids. Three miles in the interior, a ford was found; but 
the opposite bank was steep, woody, and well intrenched. 
Not a spot on the line of the Montmorenci for miles into 
the interior, nor on the vSt. Lawrence to Quebec, was left 
unprotected by the vigilance of the inaccessible Montcalm." 

A futile attempt was made by Wolfe on the last day of 
July to effect a landing of a body of troops on the west bank 
of the Montmorenci, but a repulse followed with a loss of 
about four hundred of his men. Several other undertak- 
ings in the month of August to gain positions for his troops 
on the north shore of the St. Lawrence were likewise 
abortive. Recognizing the fact that he was opposed by a 
strong force of the enemy, and that the fleet could little aid 
him on account of the ph3\sical features of the channel of 
the St. Lawrence, he perceived that he had little chance of 
accomplishing that which he had set himself to do. " ' In 
this situation,' wrote Wolfe to Pitt, on the second of Sep- 
tember, ' there is such a choice of difficulties, that I am my- 
self at a loss how to determine. The affairs of Great Britain 
require most vigorous measures ; but then the courage of a 
handful of brave men should be exerted onl}^ where there is 
some hope. ' England read the dispatch with dismay, and 
feared to hear further tidings. . . . 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 213 

" Securing the posts on the Isle of Orleans and opposite 
Quebec, he marched, with the army, on the fifth and sixth 
of September, from Point Levi [opposite the Isle of Orleans, 
and on the south bank of the St. Lawrence], to which he 
had transferred all the troops from Montmorenci, and em- 
barked them in transports that had passed the town for 
the purpose. On the three following days. Admiral Holmes, 
with the ships, ascended the river to amuse Bougainville, 
who had been sent up the north shore to watch the move- 
ments of the British army and prevent a landing. New 
France began to feel a sentiment of joy, believing the worst 
dangers of the campaign over. . . . vSummer, which 
in that climate hurries through the sky, was over; and the 
British fleet must soon withdraw from the river. ' My con- 
stitution,' wrote Wolfe, on the ninth, to the English vSecre- 
tary of State, Lord Holdernesse, ' is entirely ruined, without 
the consolation of having done any considerable service to 
the state, and without any prospect of it.' 

" But, in the meantime, Wolfe applied himself intently 
to reconnoitring the north shore above Quebec. Nature 
had given him good eyes, as well as a wamith of temper to 
follow first impressions. He himself discovered the cove 
which now bears his name, where the bending promontories 
almost form a basin with a very narrow margin, over which 
the hill rises precipitously. He saw the path that wound 
up the steep, though so narrow that two men could hardly 
march in it abreast; and he knew, by the number of tents 
which he counted on the summit, that the Canadian post 
which guarded it could not exceed a hundred. Here he 
resolved to land his army by surprise. 

"Every ofiicer knew his appointed dut)', when, at one 
o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of September, Wolfe, 
with Monckton and Murray, and about half the forces, set 
off in boats, and, without sail or oars, glided down with the 
tide. In three quarters of an hour the ships followed, and, 
though the night had become dark, aided by the rapid 



214 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

current, they reached the cove just in time to cover the land- 
ing. Wolfe and the troops with him leaped on shore; the 
light infantry, who found themselves borne by the current a 
little below the intrenched path, clambered up the steep hill, 
staying themselves by the roots and boughs of the maple 
and spruce and ash trees that covered the precipitous de- 
clivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket which 
guarded the height. The rest ascended safely by the path- 
way. A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned 
to Colonel Howe. When Townshend's division disembarked, 
the English had already gained one of the roads to Quebec, 
and, advancing in front of the forest, Wolfe stood at day- 
break with his invincible battalions on the Plains of Abra- 
ham, the battlefield of empire. . . . 

" Before ten [o'clock] the two armies, equal in numbers, 
each being composed of less than five thousand men, 
were ranged in presence of one another for battle. The 
English, not easily accessible from intervening shallow 
ravines and rail fences, were all regulars, perfect in disci- 
pline, terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, thrilling with 
pride at their morning's success, commanded by a man 
whom they obeyed with confidence and love. The doomed 
and devoted Montcalm had what Wolfe had called but 
'five weak French battalions,' of less than two thousand 
men, 'mingled with disorderly peasantry,' formed on 
ground which commanded the position of the English. 
The French had three little pieces of artillery; the English 
one or two. 

"The two armies cannonaded each other for nearly an 
hour; when Montcalm, having summoned Bougainville to 
his aid, and dispatched messenger after messenger for De 
Vaudreuil, who had fifteen hundred men at the camp, to 
come up, before he should be driven from the ground, en- 
deavored to flank the British and crowd them down the high 
bank of the river. Wolfe counteracted the movement by 
detaching Townshend with Amherst's regiment, and after- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 215 

wards a part of the loyal Americans, who formed on the 
left with a double front. 

"Waiting no longer for more troops, Montcalm led the 
French army impetuously to the attack. The ill-disciplined 
companies broke by their precipitation and the unevenness 
of the ground, and fired by platoons, without unity. The 
English, especially the Forty- third and Forty-seventh, where 
Monckton stood, received the shock with calmness; and 
after having, at Wolfe's command, reserved their fire till 
their enemy was within forty yards, their line began a regu- 
lar, rapid, and exact discharge of musketry. Montcalm 
was present everywhere, braving danger, wounded, but 
cheering by his example. The second in command, De 
Sennezergues, an associate in glory at Ticonderoga, was 
killed. The brave but untried Canadians, flinching from 
a hot fire in the open field, began to waver; and, so soon 
as Wolfe, placing himself at the head of the Twenty-eighth 
and the Louisburg Grenadiers, charged with bayonets, they 
everywhere gave way. Of the English officers, Carleton 
was wounded; Barre, who fought near Wolfe, received in 
the head a ball which destroyed the power of one eye, and 
ultimately made him blind. Wolfe, also, as he led the 
charge, was wounded in the wrist, but still pressing forward, 
he received a second ball; and, having decided the day, 
was sti*uck the third time, and mortally, in the breast. 
' Support me, ' he cried to an officer near him, ' let not my 
brave fellows see me drop.' He was carried to the rear, 
and they brought him water to quench his thirst. ' They 
run, they run!' spoke the officer on whom he leaned. ' Who 
run ? ' asked Wolfe, as his life was fast ebbing. . ' The French, ' 
replied the officer, 'give way everywhere.' 'What!' cried 
the expiring hero, 'do they run already? Go, one of you, 
to Colonel Burton; bid him march Webb's regiment with 
all speed to Charles River to cut off the fugitives. Now, 
God be praised, I die happy. ' . . . 

"The day of the battle had not passed, when De Vau- 



2i6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

dreuil, who had no capacity for war, wTote to De Ramsay, at 
Quebec, not to wait for an assault, but, as soon as his pro- 
visions were exhatisted, to raise the white flag of surrender. 
' We have cheerfull}^ sacrificed our fortunes and our homes,' 
said the citizens, ' but w^e cannot expose our wives and chil- 
dren to a massacre.' At a council of war, Piedmont, a cap- 
tain of artillery, was the only one who wished to hold out 
to the last extremity; and, on the seventeenth of Septem- 
ber, before the English had constructed batteries, De Ram- 
say capitulated. 

The British provinces, colonies, and plantations in North 
x'lmerica " rung with exultation; the towns were bright with 
illuminations, the hills with bonfires; legislatures, the pul- 
pit, the press, echoed the general joy; provinces and fami- 
lies gave thanks to God. England, too, which had shared 
the despondency of Wolfe, triumphed at his victory and 
wept for his death." 

Brigadier-General Monckton having written on the 
twenty-fifth of September to Sir Jeffrey Amherst that it 
would not be prudent to diminish the strength of the 
forces at Quebec in order to garrison the places then occu- 
pied by detachments of provincial troops, the thoughtful 
commander-in-chief, on the twenty-fifth of November, com- 
municated this information to Governor Pownall, of the 
Province of Massachusetts Bay, and at the same time ex- 
pressed his opinion that it "would be of the utmost bad 
consequences to leave those posts without troops," which 
the provincials, particularly those of Massachusetts Bay, 
had been garrisoning, as he feared that the French "would 
not fail to avail themselves by coming to seize upon them 
with impunity." He then urgently adds: "To prevent 
which, if it has not already been done, I must beg the favor 
of you to represent to your assembly the fatal effects the 
leaving those posts naked and defenseless would be at- 
tended with." He then requests him, " To move them [the 
members of the assembh^] to make a further provision for 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 217 

such of their troops, as are there for the whole winter." 
"And," as he continues, "I must beg the favor of you, 
that so soon as you have obtained their assent to this so 
necessary and pressing measure, you will be pleased to 
cause the same to be signified to every one of the com- 
manding officers of those different posts for them to com- 
municate it to their men, who, upon this emergency, will, I 
dare say, gladly stay." 

It seems evident that Samuel, Abel, and Obed Edson, 
realizing that this exigency demanded their stay at Hali- 
fax, severally, after receiving their discharges on the first 
of November and after returning home for a short visit, 
enlisted again, on the first of January, 1760, in Captain 
Lemuel Dunbar's company, which was assigned to the regi- 
ment commanded by Colonel Nathaniel Thwing on duty 
that year in Nova Scotia. Daniel Edson, who had re- 
ceived his discharge on the first of November, 1759, also 
enlisted again in the same company, on the first of January, 
1760. Abel Edson was discharged from service on the 
twentieth of July; Obed, on the fifteenth of September, 
and Samuel and Daniel on the seventeenth of December. 
Ebenezer, the brother of Samuel, Abel, and Obed, did not 
re-enlist after being discharged on the thirteenth of Novem- 
ber, 1759. 

The principal and most important undertaking of the 
military and naval forces of Great Britain in North America 
in 1760 was the capture of Montreal. In midsummer. Sir 
Jeffrey Amherst, having an army of ten thousand men, ex- 
clusive of a body of seven hundred Indians under Sir William 
Johnson, at Oswego, began moving down the St. Lawrence 
toward the city; Brigadier-General Murray, with a force 
of veterans and a fleet, proceeded from Quebec to join 
the commander-in-chief; and Brigadier-General Haviland, 
moving northward from Lake Champlain, likewise advanced 
to unite his troops with Sir Jeffrey Atnherst's army. 

"With a vast fleet of bateaux and whaleboats, and a 



2i8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

few armed craft," the ambitious commander of the British 
forces in North America "passed out of Lake Ontario, and 
down through the Thousand Islands." The passage of the 
rapids caused him no Httle anxiety regarding the navigation 
of his eight hundred or more boats, laden with heavy stores 
and crowded with troops. Sixty-six boats, with their freight, 
were lost, and eighty-four men drowned in descending them. 
On the sixth of September his army landed at Lachine, and 
before nightfall was encamped within sight of Montreal, 
Brigadier-General Murray and Brigadier-General Haviland 
being in communication with each other on the eastern 
side of the last stronghold of the French on the St. Lawrence 
River. 

" Montreal was not a natural fortress like Quebec. It 
had, of course, the St. Lawrence on one side of it, and on 
the three others a deep ditch full of water. It was sur- 
rounded by a high and thick wall, but covered too much 
ground, from the scattered nature of the houses, to be de- 
fended by a small force. . . . Here, within or around 
the city, if importance in lieu of population can justify the 
term, were gathered all the civil and military chiefs of 
Canada, for once, at least, vmited in the conviction that 
all hope had fled. . . . Since the near approach of the 
British a rapid dissolution of the French army had set in. 
The Indians had entirely repudiated their ancient allies and 
patrons, while the militia had gone home to a man. The 
married soldiers of the colony regulars had in great part 
deserted, while many of the French linesmen who had 
married in the country had done the same. Only two 
thousand five hundred troops, mostly French regulars, now 
remained. . . . They had provisions for a fortnight, 
and represented the entire resisting force of the colony. 
Amherst, Murray, and Haviland lay outside the town with 
seventeen or eighteen thousand men, mostly veterans. 

"Vaudreuil held a council of war on the sixth, which 
was naturally unanimous on the necessity of an imme- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 219 

diate capitulation." However, "a ]:)roposal to suspend 
hostilities" for a month was sent to Amherst. " Vau- 
dreuil perhaps felt ashamed of it as he quickly followed 
with an offer of capitulation." "There were forty-five 
clauses, most of which Amherst agreed to, though a few 
were summarily rejected. " " Amherst bluntly insisted that 
the troo]:)S should lay down their arms unconditionally 
as prisoners, and to undertake not to serve in Europe 
during the war. . . . On the eighth of September 
the capittilation as amended by Amherst was formally 
signed. Thus, by a stroke of the pen, Canada was trans- 
ferred to the British crown, and, save for the small settle- 
ment of New Orleans, far away, in the remote vSouth, on the 
Gulf of Mexico, the French power, previously so potent and 
so threatening, disapj.)eared forever from North America." 

George the Second died on the twenty-fifth of October, 
1760, in the seventy-seventh year of his age and the thirty- 
fourth of his reign, and his grandson, then but twenty-two 
years old, ascended the throne as George the Third. "The 
man at maturity is but the continuation of the youth," as 
remarked by an eminent historian; "from the day of his 
accession, George the Third displayed an innate love of 
authority, and, with a reluctant yielding to present obsta- 
cles, the reserved purpose of asserting his self-will, which 
doomed him in a universe of change to oppose reform, and 
struggle continuously, though hopelessly, against the slow 
but resistless approaches of popular power. ' ' 

The concluding act of the bloody and costly drama of 
the French and Indian War was made highly exciting by 
Spain becoming an ally of France, causing Great Britain 
to declare war against that power early in Januarv, 1762. 
Havana, the seat of Spanish power in America, influenced 
the British ministry to support the attempt to carry it by 
siege. The fleet and transports, under command of Ad- 
miral Pococke, arrived off the harbor of the city on the 
sixth of June. The Spanish forces defending the place 



2 20 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

numbered about forty-six thousand. The EngHsh brought 
there eleven thousand men fit for duty, who were greatly 
advantaged in the siege of the city by having the manual 
assistance in making their approaches upon Morro Castle 
of two thousand five hundred negroes from the Leuward 
Islands and Jamaica. During the month of July, pro- 
vincial troops from New A^ork and New England reinforced 
the besieging army, many of whom were never to return to 
their homes. Condticted, as the siege was, in midsummer, 
beneath the rays of a tropical sun, the experiences of those 
engaged there were exceedingly trying, and often ended in 
death. The rocky stirface of the site of Morro Castle made 
the toil of the men rearing defensive barriers extraordinarily 
fatiguing. 

"To bind and carry the fascines was, of itself, a work 
of incredible labor, made possible only by the aid of African 
slaves. Sufficient earth to hold the fascines firm was gath- 
ered with difficulty from crevices in the rocks. Once, after 
a drotight of fourteen days, the grand battery took fire, and, 
the flames crackling and spreading where water could not 
follow them, nor earth stifle them, was wholly consumed. 

" The climate spoiled a great part of the provisions. 
Wanting good water, very many of the besiegers died in 
agonies from thirst. More fell victims to a putrid fever, of 
which the malignity left but three or four hours between 
robust health and death. Some wasted away with loath- 
some disease. Over the graves the carrion-crows hovered, 
and often scratched away the scanty earth which rather hid 
than buried the dead. Hundreds of carcasses floated on the 
ocean. And yet such was the enthusiasm of the English, 
such the resolute zeal of the sailors and soldiers, such the 
unity of action between the fleet and army, that the vertical 
sun of June and July, the heavy rains of August, raging 
fever, and strong and well-defended fortresses, all the obsta- 
cles of nature and art, were surmounted, and the most de- 
cisive victory of the war was completed. 



. EDSOXS IX ENGLAXD AXD AMERICA 221 

"On the thirtieth of Jul>', after a siege of twenty-nine 
days, Morro Castle was taken by storm. On the eleventh 
of August, the governor of Havana capitulated, and the 
most important station in the West Indies fell into the 
hands of the English. At the same time, nine ships of 
the line and four frigates were captured in the harbor. The 
booty of property belonging to the King of Spain was esti- 
mated at ten millions of dollars." 

The fall of Havana hastened a termination of the hos- 
tilities so long carried on by France and England in North 
America. On the third of November, 1762, articles of peace 
were signed by the representatives of France and Spain on 
the one side, and England and Portugal on the other. 
" To England were ceded, besides islands in the West Indies, 
the Floridas; Louisiana to the Mississippi, but without the 
island of New Orleans; all Canada; Acadia; Cape Breton 
and its dependent islands; and the fisheries, except that 
France retains a share of them, with the two islets St. Pierre 
and Miquelon as a shelter for their fishermen. For the 
loss of Florida, France on the same day indemnified 
Spain by ceding to that power New Orleans and all 
Louisiana west of the Mississippi, with boundaries un- 
defined." On the tenth of February, 1763, the treaty was 
ratified. 

The other members of the Edson family, and several of 
those already mentioned, whose loyalty prompted them to 
bear arms in the cause of the crown of Great Britain after 
the enlistments of those heretofore named, but of whose 
fields of service it seems impossible now to obtain exact in- 
formation, were the following, acording to the order of time 
of their enrollment: 

Elijah, the third son of Josiah and Sarah Packard Edson, 
enlisted as a private in Captain Silvester Richmond's com- 
pany, in Colonel John Whitcomb's regiment, on the sixth 
of March, 1760. to go on the "expedition to ihc westward." 
He served until the second of November that \-ear. He 



2 22 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

was titled "doctor," and was allowed one hundred and 
sixty miles travel homeward. 

Nathan, the eldest son of Nathan and Mary Sprague 
Edson, enlisted as a private on the sixth of May, 1761, and 
served, tmtil the seventh of December, in Captain Lemuel 
Dunbar's company. He enlisted again, on the twenty- 
third of March, 1762, and served in Captain Josiah Dun- 
bar's company until the twentieth of November that year. 

Elijah, the eldest son of Elijah and Anne Packard Edson, 
began serving as a private in Captain Lemuel Dunbar's 
company on the twenty-fifth of May, 1761, in which he re- 
mained until his discharge on the seventh of December. 

Obed, the fourth son of Samuel and Mary Dean Edson, 
again enlisted, and as a corporcd served in Captain Josiah 
Dunbar's company from the eleventh of July to the eleventh 
of December, 1761, and subsequently imtil the twenty- 
seventh of that month in the company commanded by En- 
sign Joseph Byram, when he was with the invalids left at 
Crown Point. 

Jesse, the second, and Obed, the third, and Lewis, the 
fourth son of Obed and Keturah Willis Edson, enlisted on 
the eleventh of July, 1761, as privates, in Captain Josiah 
Dunbar's com]jany. Jesse served until the twenty-seventh 
of December, and Obed and lycwis until the tenth of that 
month. The three brothers again enlisted, on the twenty- 
third of March, 1762, as privates in Captain Josiah Dun- 
bar's company; Obed and Lewis being discharged on the 
twentieth of November, that year, and Jesse, on the third 
of January, 1763. 

Samuel, the eldest son of Samuel and Martha Perkins 
Edson, entered Captain Josiah Dunbar's company as a pri- 
vate on the twentieth of March, 1762, and served in it until 
the third of January, 1763. 

Daniel, the third son of Joseph and Lydia Cary Edson, 
enlisted in the same company as a private on the twenty- 
third of March, 1762, and served until the first of December. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 223 

Abiezer, the second son of Josiah and Sarah Packard 
Edson, was commissioned, in 1762, captain of the Second 
Bridgewater Company, in the Second Regiment of Ply- 
mouth County Mihtia, commanded by Colonel Thomas 
Clapp. 

Josiah, the eldest son of Josiah and Sarah Packard 
Edson, having been commissioned major in the Second Regi- 
ment of Plymouth County Militia, in 1762, was, on the 
eighth of September, that year, appointed lieutenant-colonel 
in the same regiment, which was under the command of 
Colonel Thomas Clapp.' 

The war cost the colonies not less than ten millions of 
dollars, as expressed by the value of money current in the 
United States. The lives of nearly thirty thousand inhabi- 
tants were sacrificed, while the loss of property at the hands 
of plundering and ruthless savages was beyond calculation. 

A year before the ratification of the articles of peace, 
or on the sixteenth of January, 1762, at the age of four- 
score years, died Captain Josiah Edson, the second son of 
Joseph and Experience Edson. " From his early manhood 
to almost the close of his life, he was in some official sta- 
tion of trust and importance, sustaining many local and 
honorable offices, mostly elective, the duties of which he 
discharged with ability and fidelity, to the satisfaction and 
approbation of the public. His principal occupation, how- 
ever, was that of an agriculturist, improving the largest and 
best cultivated farm in the town of Bridgewater. He was 
thirt}^ years a selectman, between the years 1704 and 1756; 
a long time captain of a military company; many years a 

^ History of the United States. By George Bancroft, Boston. 1S52. Vol. 
iv., pp. 315, 319, 325, 326, 327, 331, 332, sss, 334, 335. 336, 337. 33^' 386, 444. 
445, 452. — Fight with France for Ah^irtlt America. By A. G. Bradley. New 
York, 18 — . Pp. 48, 339, 340, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382. — Selections from 
the Public Documents of the Province of Nova Scotia. Edited by Thomas B. 
Akins. Halifax, 1869. Pp. 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 448, 449, 451, 452. — 

Massachusetts Archives. Muster Rolls in the office of Secretary of State, Boston. 
Vol. xcv., p. 67; vol. xcvii., pp. 133, 134, 230, 289, 310; vol. cxviii., ]ip. 223, 
383, 462; vol. xcix., pp. 45, 46, 125, 170, 217. 



224 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

justice of the peace; a deacon of the church; and a repre- 
sentative in the General Court of Massachusetts Colony for 
the years 1735, '36, '39, '43, and 45. 

" Captain Ed son was a man of large stature, rather above 
the medium height, of dignified deportment, of easy and 
conciliating nianners, not studied b}^ rule or cultivated by 
art, but the outward expression of a mind well disciplined 
and void of hypocrisy, and with all his natural and official 
dignity was one of the mildest of men and the humblest of 
Christians. Without any apparent effort to please or flatter, 
he enjoyed the confidence of the wise and good, and com- 
manded the respect even of the vicious and profane. He 
was remarkable for his knowledge of human nature and of 
character. Under his scrutinizing eyes, the deceitful man 
lost confidence and the hypocrite retired. His ambition 
was orily that which is identified with the reward of merit 
and the applause of the virtuous. These he accjuired in 
an eminent degree, and descended to the grave ripe and 
full of years, a candidate for higher honors in the kingdom 
of his Redeemer. 

" His wife was a woman of domestic and retiring habits, 
amiable and forgiving in her disposition, and ambitious 
only to promote the welfare and happiness of her husband 
and children." She was the mother of seven children, 
three sons and four daughters. The remains of Captain 
Josiah Edson and his wife, Sarah Packard, are entombed 
in the old graveyard in Bridgewater, near the Unitarian 
Church. The family residence was in the south parish, on 
land conveyed to him by his uncle. Justice Josiah Edson; 
the site of the homestead being about two hundred feet 
north of the dwelling of Philo Mitchell in 1864. 

" Captain Josiah Edson, some years before he died, col- 
lected the materials, and compiled a valuable work, which 
has been supposed he left in existence with his other papers 
and documents at his death in 1762, containing a short biog- 
raphy and a genealogy of the several families, the first and 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 225 

early settlers of Bridgewater and of their descendants down 
to their own generation, with a brief delineation of their in- 
dividual characters. 

"When a youth and a young man, I [Elijah Hayward] 
often heard the Rev. Perez Fobes, who had read the 
manuscript, con\'erse about it, and of the character of the 
persons as therein descriljcd, some of whom survived Cap- 
tain Edson. I also often heard my grandmother [Freelove, 
the fourth daughter of Ca]]>tain Josiah and Sarah Packard 
Edson, who married, on March 5, 1739, Josiah, son of John 
and Abigail Fobes] Hayward mention her ' father's book' as 
she called it, lament its loss, and relate its contents. On 
the death of Captain Edson, I have been informed, all his 
papers came into the hands of his son, Colonel Josiah Edson, 
and but a very small portion of them have since been seen. 
It was a matter of regret to those who spoke of it, that this 
manuscript work could not be found among the papers 
left by Captain Edson, and it is not now probable that it 
will ever be found. Whether it contained sentiments and 
opinions not in accordance with those subsequently enter- 
tained b}^ Colonel Edson, and he destroyed it, or it was lost 
or destroved bv accident, has not been ascertained. 

"The Rev. Perez Fobes was twenty; my father nine- 
teen [twenty-one?]; and my grandmother forty-nine years 
of age, when Captain Edson died in 1762. The Rev. Mr. 
Fobes died in 18 12, aged seventy; my father [Elijah] in 
181 5, aged seventy- four, and my grandmother in 1800, 
aged eighty-seven. T was born in 1786. It was from my 
recollections of their con\^ersation in relation to that work, 
and from information of a similar import received from 
aged inhabitants fifty years ago, that I am indebted [now 
in 1853] for the characters I have described of some of the 
first three generations of those who made early and perma- 
nent settlements in the town. 

"It is a source of much regret to n"iany of the present 

generation, descendants of the fathers of the town, that 
15 



2 26 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

« 

this manuscript work of Captain Edson's has not been pre- 
served. It no doubt contained, besides a register of births, 
marriages, and deaths, many important facts, a narrative of 
many interesting events, and a description of many persons 
and things, not now to be obtained, illustrative of the man- 
ners, customs, and peculiar habits of that primitive age of 
Bridgewater. — June i, 1853. Elijah Hayward."' 

^ A Genealogical Account of the Edsons Early Settled in Bridgewater, with 
Appendices. Lowell, 1S64. Pp. 24, 25, 26, 27, 39-41. 



Chapter VIII 

Josiah Edson, the Loyalist 

1768-1778 

THE Treaty of Paris of 1763 brought great joy to the 
American colonists, not only because it terminated 
the calamitous war which had sorely afflicted them for nine 
years, but also that it afforded them an opportunity to pur- 
sue their different callings with bright expectations of ac- 
quiring such gains as would ])ecuniarily place them at no 
distant day in the enjoyment of prosperity. This pleasing 
prospect of being privileged to better their fortunes by ener- 
getic toil and industrial thrift was suddenly darkened by 
the intelligence that the British Parliament was about to 
pass an act for imposing stamp duties upon them without 
any recognition of their right of questioning the exercise of 
a power so arbitrary and despotic. Although the colonists 
made timely protests against the passage of the proposed 
act, both in meetings at home and by representatives in 
England, little heed was given their remonstrances and ar- 
guments by King George the Third and his ministers. A 
member of the House of Commons, who voted against the 
resolution for taxing the colonists, spoke as follows in their 
behalf, on the sixth of February, 1765: 

" The Parliament may choose whether they will tax 
America or not; they have a right to tax Ireland, yet do 
not exercise that right. Still stronger objections ma)' be 
urged against their taxing America. Other ways of raising 
the moncA'S there recjuisite for the public service exist, and 

227 



228 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

have not yet failed; but the colonies in general have with 
alacrity contributed to the common cause. . . . Par- 
liament is undoubtedly the universal, unlimited legislature 
of the British dominions; but it should voluntarily set 
bounds to the exercise of its power; and if the majority of 
Parliament think they ought not to set these bounds, then 
they should give a share of the election of the legislature to 
the American colonies, otherwise the liberties of America, 
I do not say will be lost, but will be in danger; and they 
cannot be injured without danger to the liberties of Great 
Britain." 

Isaac Barre, having taunted the House for its ignorance 
regarding the affairs of the colonies, Charles Townshend, 
who claimed to know the character of the colonists, avowed 
himself as favoring their taxation, declaring that they " had 
borne but a small proportion of the expense of the late war, 
and had yet obtained by it immense advantages at a vast 
expense to the mother country, ' and now, ' he asked, ' will 
these American children, planted by our care, nourished up 
by our indulgence to a degree of strength and opulence, and 
protected by our arms, grudge to contribute their mite to 
relieve us from the heavy burden under which we lie ? ' " 

When he had finished, Barre, "the companion and 
friend of Wolfe, sharer of the dangers and glories of Louis- 
burg and Quebec," arose, and with reproachful eyes and 
with ringing words began an unpremeditated defence of 
the colonists, saying: 

''They planted by your carel No; your oppressions 
planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to 
a then uncultivated, unhospitable country, where they ex- 
posed themselves to almost all the hardships to which 
human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of 
a savage foe, the most subtle, and I will take it upon me to 
say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of 
God's earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English 
liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure, compared 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 229 

with those they suffered in their own country, and from the 
hands of those who should have been their friends. 

" They nourished up by your indulgence! They grew by 
\'our neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about 
them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule 
them in one department and another, who were, perhaps, 
the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, 
sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, 
and to prey upon them ; men whose behavior on many occa- 
sions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil 
within them ; men promoted to the highest seats of justice, 
some who, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to a 
foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a 
court of justice in their own. 

" They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken 
up arms in your defence ; have exerted a valor amidst 
their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a 
country whose frontier was drenched in l)lood, while its 
interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolu- 
ment. 

"And believe me — remember I this day told you so — 
the same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at 
first will accompany them still. But prudence forbids me 
to explain myself further ; God knows I do not at this time 
speak from motives of party heat; what I deliver are the 
genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me 
in general knowledge and experience the respectable body 
of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America 
than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that 
country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any 
subjects the king has ; but a people jealous of their liberties, 
and who will vindicate them, if ever thev should be vio- 
lated." 

The Stamp Act ])assed the House of Commons on the 
twenty-seventh of February, 1765, and on the eighth of 
March it met the ajiprowil of the House of Lords. \n lieu 



230 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

of the personal assent of his Majesty King George the Third, 
it was subscribed for him by a commission, on the twenty- 
second of March. The reventie to be derived by it was the 
receipts of the sales of stamps that established the validity 
of the instrument of writing to which they were affixed. 
" Unless stamps were used, marriages would be null, notes 
of hand valueless, ships at sea prizes to the first captors, 
suits at law impossible, transfers of real estate invalid, in- 
heritances irreclaimable." 

The industry, enterprise, and advantages of the North 
American colonists were not only injuriously restricted at 
that time by laws of navigation and trade, but also disas- 
trously weighted by taxation. " They could not export the 
chief products of their industry, neither sugar, nor tobacco, 
nor cotton, nor wool, nor indigo, nor ginger, nor fustic, nor 
other dyeing woods; nor molasses, nor rice, with some ex- 
ceptions; nor beaver, nor peltry, nor copper ore, nor pitch, 
nor tar, nor turpentine, nor masts, nor yards, nor bow- 
sprits, nor coffee, nor pimento, nor cocoanuts, nor whale- 
fins, nor raw silk, nor hides, nor skins, nor pot or pearl 
ashes, to any place but Great Britain, not even to Ireland. 
Nor might any foreign ships enter a colonial harbor. Salt 
might be imported from any place in New England, New- 
York, Pennsylvania, and Quebec ; wines might be imported 
from the Madeiras and the Azores, but were to pay a duty 
in American ports for the British exchequer; and victuals, 
horses, and servants might be brought from Ireland. In 
all other respects, Great Britain was not only the sole mar- 
ket for the products of America, but the only storehouse for 
its supplies. 

"The colonists abounded in land, and so could feed 
flocks of sheep. Lest they should multiply their flocks, 
and weave their own cloth, they might not use a ship, nor a 
boat, nor a carriage, no not even a pack-horse, to carry wool 
or any manufacture of which wool forms a part, across the 
line of one province to another. They could not land wool 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 2:!i 



o- 



from islands in the harbor, or bring it across a river. A 
British sailor, finding himself in want of clothes in their 
harbors, might not biu' there more than forty shillings ' 
worth of woollens. 

" Where was there a house in the colonies that did not 
cherish and did not possess the English Bible? And yet 
to print that Bible in British America was prohibited as a 
piracy; and the Bible, except in the native savage dialects, 
was never printed there till the land became free. 

"That country, which was the home of the beaver, 
might not manufacture its own hats ; no man in the planta- 
tions could be a hatter, or a journeyman at that trade, un- 
less he had served an apprenticeship of seven years. No 
hatter could employ more than two apprentices ; nor might 
a negro assist at the work. No American hat might be 
sent from one plantation to another, nor be loaded upon 
any horse, cart, or carriage for conveyance. 

" America abounded in iron ores of the best quality, as 
well as in wood and coal ; slitting mills, steel furnaces, and 
plating forges, to work with a tilt-hammer, were prohibited 
in the colonies as ' nuisances. ' 

"While free labor was debarred of its natural rights in 
the employment of its resources, the slave trade was en- 
couraged to proceed with unrelenting eagerness ; and in the 
year that had just expired, from Liverpool alone, seventy- 
nine ships had gone in that trade to Africa, and had borne 
to the West Indies and the continent more than fifteen 
thousand three hundred negroes, two thirds as many as the 
first colonists of Massachusetts. 

" And now taxation, direct and indirect, was added to 
colonial restrictions; and henceforward both were to go 
together. A duty was to be collected on foreign sugar, 
molasses, indigo, coffee, Madeira wine, imported directly 
into any of the plantations in America; also a duty on 
Portugal and Spanish wines, on Eastern silks, on Eastern 
calicoes, on foreign linen cloth, on French lawn, thtnigh 



232 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

imported directly from Great Britain; on British colonial 
coffee shipped from one plantation to another. Nor was 
henceforward any part of the old subsidy to be drawn back 
on the export of white calicoes and muslins, on which a still 
higher duty was to be exacted and retained. And stamp 
duties were to be paid throughout all the British American 
colonies, on and after the first day of the coming November. 

" These laws were to be enforced, not by the civil officers 
only, but by naval and military officers, irresponsible to 
the civil power in the colonies. The penalties and forfeit- 
ures for breach of the revenue laws were to be decided in 
courts of vice-admiralty, without the interposition of a 
jury, by a single judge, who had no support whatever but 
from his share in the profits of his own condemnations." 

The Stamp Act had a short existence. It was univer- 
sally decried by the colonists of America as arbitrary and 
unconstitutional, a common determination to oppose and 
hinder its execution was widespread in the provinces, the 
persons and property of those upholding it being publicly 
menaced by mobs that were too dangerous to be defied. 

On the first day of November, 1765, when the Act was 
to go into operation in the American colonies, there was no 
officer to execute it, nor a stamp offered for sale. For a 
time there was doubt concerning the proper formalities to 
be given to commercial and legal proceedings, and as a con- 
sequence the provincial courts were suspended, and the 
owners of ships were deterred from getting clearance papers 
for their vessels. However, it was not long before old 
forms of procedure were returned to, and ships began voy- 
ages and customs were collected in the ways that were pre- 
viously considered legal. 

As a consequence of the fearlessness of the colonists in 
declaring themselves "Sons of Liberty" and unwilling to 
become slaves of Great Britain, a vote for the repeal of the 
Stamp Act was taken in the House of Lords on the morning 
of the twenty-second of February, 1766; two hundred and 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 233 

seventy-five of its members assenting to it and one hundred 
and sixty-seven dissenting. On the nineteenth of March, 
his Majesty, the King, signed the act annulhng the obnox- 
ious measure. 

When the intelHgence of the repeal of the Stamp i\ct 
reached Boston, the nineteenth of May was set apart for its 
celebration. The day was ushered in shortl)^ after mid- 
night by the church bells joyously ringing in every part of 
the city, and early that morning the citizens began hanging 
in conspicuous places flags and mottoes ; many of the in- 
scriptions being " Liberty, Property, and no Stamps. " " Gay 
streamers were run u]3 on every house-top and along the 
steeples, and the great Liberty Tree was covered with them. 
Bands of music in different parts of the town played stirring 
airs, and now and then a crowd would take up some patriotic 
song and sing in chorus. John Hancock and other rich 
citizens kept open houses and dispensed a large hospitality. 
Subscriptions were made in various parts to release poor 
debtors who were then imprisoned, so that liberty became 
something more than a word to them." It was remarked 
at the time by an eminent citizen: " ' We have never seen 
so sudden a transition from the depths of sorrow to the 
heights of joy.' 

"The night came and then every house blazed with 
light; skyrockets and fireworks sparkled on the Common; 
and the broad old ' Liberty Tree, ' hung with lamps, illu- 
minated the crowd which gathered about it. When mid- 
night came, the tap of the drum was the signal for repose, 
and then every one went home." 

The imposition of new duties upon the i)eoi)lc of the 
American colonies, under the act of May, 1767, to afford an 
increase of revenue to Great Britain, was regarded as a 
dangerous innovation, and one unsupported by ancient 
precedents. " Wc being obliged to take commodities from 
Great Britain," as argued l)y the conservative author c^f the 
Farmcr\s Letters, "special (hitios on (heir exportation to us 



234 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

are as much taxes upon us as those imposed by the Stamp 
Act. Great Britain claims and exercises the right to pro- 
hibit manufactures in America. Once admit that she may 
lay duties upon her exportations to us, for the purpose of 
levying money on us only, she then will have nothing to do 
but to lay those duties on the articles which she prohibits 
us to manufacture, and the tragedy of American liberty is 
finished. We are in the situation of a besieged city, sur- 
rounded in every part but one. If that is closed up, no 
step can be taken but to surrender at discretion. 

" I would persuade the people of the colonies imme- 
diately, vigorously, and unanimously to exert themselves 
in the most firm but the most peaceable manner, for ob- 
taining relief. If an inveterate resolution is formed, to an- 
nihilate the liberties of the governed, English history affords 
examples of resistance by force." 

For the purpose of obtaining a favorable consideration 
of the proposed character of the opposition to be made 
against the execution of the act for the collection of new 
duties, a circular letter, drafted by Samuel Adams, having 
been read in the House of Representatives of the province 
of Massachusetts Bay, and almost unanimously accepted by 
its members, on the eleventh of February, 1 768, was sent to 
each legislative body of the different colonies and planta- 
tions in North America. 

The particulars relating to this action of the House of 
Representatives of the province of Massachusetts Bay 
reached the British ministry on the fifteenth of April. 
Lord Hillsborough, fearing that the contents of the circular 
letter might influence the representatives of the other 
twelve colonies to place themselves in an attitude of con- 
tempt which might estrange them from a position of loyalty 
to King George the Third and the administrators of the 
government of the provinces and plantations, wrote at once 
to the governors of each of them, disapproving of any con- 
sideration being given to the matters set forth in the com- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 235 

mtmication sent to their assemblies, which, as described by 
him, was '"of a most dangerous and factious tendency,' 
calculated 'to inflame the minds' of the people, 'promote 
an unwarrantable combination, and to excite open opposi- 
tion to the authority of Parliament. You will therefore,' 
he said, 'exert your utmost influence to prevail upon the 
assembly of your province to take no notice of it, which will 
be treating it with the contempt it deserves. If they give 
any countenance to this seditious paper, it will be your 
duty to prevent any proceedings upon it by an immediate 
prorogation or dissolution.' " 

The Go\'ernor of the province of Massachusetts Bay 
was commanded to require " the House of Representa- 
tives in his Majesty's name to rescind the resolution 
which gave birth to the circular letter from the Speaker, 
and to declare their disapprobation of that rash and hasty 
proceeding. ' ' 

On the twenty-first of June these instructions were com- 
municated by the Governor to the House of Representa- 
tives, which nine days later accepted a letter written by 
Samuel Adams and addressed to Lord Hillsborough, " in 
which they showed that the circular letter of February was 
indeed the declared sense of a large majority of their body; 
and expressed their reliance on the clemency of the King, 
that to petition him would not be deemed inconsistent with 
respect for the British Constitution, nor to acquaint their 
fellow- subjects of their having done so, be discountenanced 
as an inflammatory proceeding." 

"Then came the great question"; the answer to it 
being ascertained in one of the fullest attended sessions of 
the House ever known. The votes were declared by word 
of mouth, seventeen of the members announcing their will- 
ingness to have the resolution relating to the circular letter 
rescinded, and ninety- two their resolution to adhere to it. 
A message particularizing the ])roceedings of the session was 
then sent to the Governor, who, on learning that the House 



236 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

had determined not to rescind the resolution, dissolved it as 
ordered. 

One of the seventeen representatives who voted to re- 
scind the resolution was Colonel Josiah Edson, the eldest 
son of Captain Josiah and Sarah (Packard) Edson. He was 
fifty-nine years old, and a lieutenant-colonel of a regiment 
of Plymouth County militia. Although graduated in 1 7 30 
from Harvard College, and " distinguished for strong natural 
abilities and extensive literary acquirements," he studied 
nothing to fit him for any profession, "but devoted most of 
his time to agricultural pursuits." Besides being honored 
with different town and parish offices, he was elected eight 
times, beginning with the year 1746, to discharge the duties 
of a representative of the people of the town of Bridge- 
water, and four times after the year in which he had cast the 
vote that acquired for him a still greater distinction of being 
a man governed by a personal conviction of doing that 
which he thought was right. Having repeatedly taken the 
oath of allegiance to the British Crown, he conscientiously 
believed it to be his bounden duty, upon learning the com- 
mands of Lord Hillsborough, his Majesty's minister, to vote 
conformably to "the express orders of the King." The 
odium of being numbered with so small a minority of the 
representatives who dared to be loyal and had the courage 
to maintain the power of the existing government was not 
then, as it was a few years later, popularly regarded as igno- 
miniously blemishing his otherwise untarnished reputation. 

" Massachusetts was left without a legislature. Its 
people had no intention to begin a rebellion; but only to 
defend their liberties, which had the sanction of natural 
right and of historic tradition." 

" When, on the nineteenth of August, England heard 
that Massachusetts had, by a vast majority of its repre- 
sentatives, refused to rescind the resolutions of the prece- 
ding winter," one of the British ministers held the opinion 
that the disobedient members of the Massachusetts Bay 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 237 

House of Representatives "should be sent for, to give an 
account of their conduct, and that all the rigors of the 
law should be exercised against those who should persist 
in refusing to submit to Parliament. ' Where rebellion be- 
gins,' said he, 'the laws cease, and they can invoke none 
in their favor. ' 

The legislative rights of the people of the province of 
Massachusetts Bay having been suspended, and the news 
having been received that three regiments were coming 
from England to suppress further disloyal acts on the part 
of the rebellious subjects of King George III. in that colony, 
the Selectmen of Boston, on the fourteenth of September, 
sent invitations to every town in the province, requesting 
them to send coinmittees to a convention to be held in 
Faneuil Hall, where they might give " sound and whole- 
some advice" concerning the matters to be brought be- 
fore them, and to "prevent any sudden and unconnected 
measures." 

" On the appointed day, Thursday, the twenty- second of 
September, the anniversary of the King's coronation, about 
seventy persons, from sixty-six towns, came together in 
Faneuil Hall in convention, and their number increased till 
ninety-six towns and eight districts, nearly every settle- 
ment in the colony, were represented. B\' the mere act of 
assembling, the object of the convention was accomplished. 
It was a bold and successful attempt to show that, if the 
policy of suppressing the legislature should be persisted in. 
a way was discovered by which legislative government 
could still be instituted, and a general expression of opinion 
and concentration of power be obtained. They marked 
their own sense of the character of this meeting b\' electing 
the Speaker and Clerk of the late House of Representatix'es 
to the same offices in their own body." 

"The convention, wiiich remained but six daxs in ses- 
sion, relocated the ])rotesl of Massachusetts against the tax- 
ation of the colonies by tlie Brilisli Parliament; against a 



238 EDSOXS IX EXGLAXD AXD AMERICA 

standing army ; against the danger to ' the Uberties of 
America from a united body of pensioners and soldiers.' 
They resolved to preserve good order, by the aid of the civil 
magistrate alone. 'While the people.' said they, 'wisely 
observe the medium between an abject submission under 
grievous oppression on the one hand, and irrational at- 
tempts to obtain redress on the other, they may promise 
themselves success in recovering the exercise of their just 
rights, relying on Him who ruleth according to His pleasure, 
with unerring wisdom and irresistible influence, in the hearts 
of the children of men. ' They then dissolved themselves, 
leaving the care for the public to the Council. 

"When the attorney- and solicitor-general of England 
were called upon to find traces of high treason in what had 
been done, each declared that none had been committed. 
' Look into the papers, ' said the attorney-general, ' and see 
how well these Americans are versed in the Crown law; I 
doubt whether thev have been ^uiltv of an overt act of 
treason, but I am sure they have come within a hair's 
breadth of it. ' " 

Step by step, year by year, the people of the thirteen 
colonies were advancing toward that point of time at which 
there would be no other resource for a release from their 
grievances than that of taking up arms in defence of their 
political libert}'. 

With ten thousand regulars,' said the creatures of the 
British ministry, in 1774, 'we can march through the con- 
tinent. ' To bring ' Boston on its knees and terrify the rest 
of America by the example,' Thomas Gage, the military 
commander-in-chief for all North America, was also com- 
missioned the civil governor of Massachusetts, and was sent 
over with four regiments to enforce submission." On the 
twenty-eighth of April, 1774, a bill was introduced into 
Parliament that abrogated so much of the charter of the 
province of Massachusetts Bay " as gave to its legislature 
the election of the members of the Council ; abolished town 



EDSOXS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 239 

meetings except for the choice of town officers, or on the 
special permission of the Governor; conferred on the ex- 
ecutive the power of appointing and removing the sheriffs 
at pleasure; and transforming the trial by jury into a snare 
for the people, it intrusted the returning of juries to the 
dependent sheriff. The bill passed the House of Commons 
by a vote of more than three to one." 

His Majesty King George the Third, it is said, was so 
eager to give effect to the law which subverted the charter 
of Massachusetts that, acting upon information confessedly 
insufficient, " he with the assistance of one of his ministers, " 
made out for that province, "in May, 1774, a list of the 
names of such men of ability and distinction in the colony 
as he assumed would serve as members of the provincial 
Council. Commanded to perform the ser\'ice required of 
them, they became known as mandamus councillors. In 
number they were thirty-six." 

The act "for the better regulating the province of the 
Massachusetts Bay," which had received his Majesty's sig- 
nature on the twentieth of May, became operative on the 
ninth of August, on its reception at Boston. " Within a 
week, eleven of the mandamus councillors took the oath of 
office, and were followed in a few days by fourteen more.' 
They were persuaded that the province could by no pos- 
sibility hold out ; the promise of assistance from other colo- 
nies was scoffed at as a delusion, intended only to keep up 
the spirit of the mob." 

^ "The first ten, marked with a star, alone took the office. 

"Thomas Flucker.* Thomas Hutchinson, jr. 

Foster Hutchinson.* Samuel Danforth. 

Harrison Gray.* James Russell. 

Joseph Lee.* Timothy Ruggles. 

Isaac Winslow.* Israel Williams. 

WiUiam Browne.* George Watson. 

James Boutineau.* Nathaniel Ray Thomas. 

Joshua Loring.* Timothy Woodbridge. 

William Pepperrell.* WilUam Vassall. 

John Erving, jr.* Joseph Greene. 

Thomas Oliver. Andrew OUver. 



240 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Only ten of the mandamus councillors entered upon the 
duties of the office. Before them, Governor Gage brought 
for consideration the matter of restricting the holding of 
town meetings b}^ the people of the province as enjoined by 
the received act of Parliament. '"It is a point of law,' 
said the members of the new Council, ' and should be re- 
ferred to the Crown lawyers. ' He asked their concurrence 
in removing a sheriff. 'The act of Parliament,' they an- 
swered, ' confines the power of removal to the Governor 
alone.' " They were in no mood to give him either en- 
couragement or advice. The waves of public indignation 
were already billowing high about them, and they could not 
but perceive how helpless they were upon that perilous sea 
of unpopularity then so alarmingly tumultuous and threat- 
ening. 

Israel Williams of Hatfield was too prudent to accept 
the office, and so was John Worthington of Springfield. 
" ' If you value your life, I advise you not to return home at 
present,' was the warning received by Timothy Ruggles 
from the town of Hardwicke, whose freemen, with those of 
New Braintree and of Greenwich, so resented his accepting a 
place in the Council, that they vowed he should never again 
]jass the great bridge of the town alive. 

" By nine o'clock, on the morning of the twenty-sixth of 
August, more than two thousand men marched in com- 
panies to the Common in Worcester, where they forced 
Timothy Paine to walk through their ranks with his hat off 
as far as the centre of their hollow square, and read a written 
resignation of his seat at the Council board. 

Peter Oliver. Josiah Edson. 

John Erving, jr. John Murray 

Richard Lechmere. Daniel Leonard. 

John Worthington. Thomas Palmer. 

Timothy Paine. Isaac Royall. 

Jeremiah Powell. Robert Hooper. 

Jonathan Simpson. Abijah Willard." 

The Massachusetts Civil List for the Colonial and Provincial Periods, 

1630-1774, p. 64. By WilUam H. Whitmore. Albany, 1870. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 241 

"A large detachment then moved to Rutland to deal 
with John Murray. The next day at noon Wilder of 
Templeton and Holden of Princeton brought u]) their 
companies, and by three in the afternoon, about fifteen 
hundred men had assembled, most of them armed with blud- 
geons. But Murray had escaped on the previous evening, 
just before the sentries were set round his house and along 
the roads; they therefore sent him a letter recjuiring him to 
resign. The temper of the people brooked no division; 
they held every person that would not join them an enemy 
to his country. ' The consequences of 3'^our proceedings 
will be rebellion, confiscation, and death,' said the younger 
Murray; and his words were as oil to the flame. ' No con- 
sequences, ' they replied to him, ' are so dreadful to a free 
people as that of being made slaves. ' ' This, ' wrote he to 
his brother, ' is not the language of the common people only ; 
those that have hitherto sustained the fairest character are 
the warmest in this matter; and among the many friends 
you have heretofore had, I can scarcely mention any to 
3"ou now. ' 

" One evening in August, the farmers of Union, in Con- 
necticut, found Abijah Willard of Lancaster, Massachusetts, 
within their precinct. They kept watch over him during 
the night, and the next morning five hundred men would 
have taken him to the county jail ; 1 nit after a march of six 
miles he begged forgiveness of all honest men for hax'ing 
taken the oath of office, and promised never to sit or act in 
the Council. 

"The people of Plymouth were grieved that George 
Watson, their respected townsman, was willing to act 
under his appointment. On the first Lord's day after his 
purpose was known, as soon as he took his seat in meeting, 
his neighbors and friends put on their hats before the con- 
gregation and walked out of the house. The extreme public 
indignity was more than he could bear. As he passed his 

pew, he hid his face by benchng his head ox'cr his cane, and 
16 



242 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

determined to resign. Of the thirty-six who received the 
King's summons as councillors, more than twenty declined 
to obey it or revoked their acceptance. The rest fled in 
terror to the army at Boston, and even there could not hide 
their sense of shame." 

Colonel Josiah Edson, whose loyalty to the British 
Crown had been evidenced, in 1768, by his vote as "a re- 
scinder" in the House of Representatives, was one of the 
number of councillors nominated by King George the Third. 
As said of him, "being a loyalist from principle and habit, 
as most of the eminent and distinguished colonists were at 
that day, and having repeatedly taken the oath of allegiance 
to the British Crown, and not believing that he could be 
released from its obligations by any act of usurpation of the 
government, he could not conscientiously concur in any 
hostile measures on the part of the colonies; yet no one 
more sincerely lamented or more heartily disapproved of 
the conduct of the Parliament as unjust and inexpedient, 
though he did not doubt its strict right, according to the 
theory of the English Constitution, to tax the colonies in all 
cases whatsoever. Besides, he was solemnly impressed 
with the idea that the power of England was irresistible, 
and that any attempt to oppose its measures by arms, how- 
ever odious those measures might be, would result in de- 
feat, disgrace, and the most abject submission. He was 
then a colonel of a full regiment of the militia, with nearly 
all the rank and file of which he was personally acquainted 
and on terms of social and friendly intercourse; and such 
had been his previous great popularity, founded on meri- 
torious conduct, there can be no doubt that had he espoused 
the cause of the colonies he would have been among the 
foremost, in either civil or military rank, during the Revo- 
lution." 

Unfortunately for him, he could not be induced to 
change his determination of adhering to the oaths of alle- 
giance which he had so often taken. Very few of his kinsfolk 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 243 

and friends in the town of Bridgewater approved of his 
resolution. DisincHned to subject himself to the further 
contempt and censure of those of the townsmen whose po- 
litical sentiments were the opposite of his own, he quitted 
his home, family, and friends, and made Boston his abode, 
in order to have the protection of the British troops gar- 
risoning the castle and fortifications in and about the city. 

About the beginning of autumn, a few weeks before his 
departure from Bridgewater, an excited concourse of men, 
many of thenx young, gathered at a late hour one night 
around the home of Colonel Edson, having gone to it with 
an intention of taking him before the town Committee of 
Safety for examination. Awakened by the tumult, he 
arose from his bed, and inquired from an open window the 
purpose of their coming there. Learning their object, he 
dressed himself and appeared at the front door, where he 
extended an invitation to the leaders of the party to come 
into the house. Finding that they would not enter, he 
began expostulating with them regarding the unseemly and 
tumultuous character of their visit, saying: " ' If you insist 
upon taking me to the Committee of Safety I shall go with 
you, but you act inconsistently. You claim the liberty of 
enjoying your own opinions, and at the same time would 
deprive me of the exercise of mine. Is this right ? If you 
think so, take me with you. But why have you assembled 
here in the night-time and in a riotous manner, when you 
all know that I have never concealed myself from your 
notice and observation? Were you ashamed to approach 
me in the light of heaven ? ' Such had been their previous 
respect and esteem for his person and character, ' ' writes the 
well-informed chronicler of the occurrence, "that after a 
brief consultation among themselves, they returned to their 
homes without any further disturbance or molestation of 
him.'" 



^ This information was derived "from Captain Jacob Leonard and others 
who were present on the occasion." 



244 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" When he had completed his arrangements for joining 
the British in Boston," as the same writer narrates, " and it 
was known when he would leave his residence for that pur- 
pose, and had commenced his journey on horseback, about 
one hundred of his townsmen, many of whom were armed, 
assembled on each side of the bridge in West Bridgewater, 
over which he would pass, with a view of arresting him as a 
tory for trial and punishment. When he came in sight of 
the bridge and saw the forcible array of men met to oppose 
his progress, he walked his horse moderately, and approach- 
ing them in his usual complaisant and dignified manner, ac- 
costed them: 'Good-morning, gentlemen. I am as much 
the friend of your rights and liberties as you are yourselves ; 
but you are engaged in an unfortunate cause, and must be 
defeated. You will repent of your conduct — mark my 
words, this day. Good-bye, gentlemen.' He then passed 
through their lines, not one of them molesting him, not 
even seizing the reins of his horse. Had he manifested any 
fear, or much excitement, he would no doubt have been 
arrested; but he had long possessed their confidence, and 
until the beginning of the difficulties between the colonies 
and the mother country, was by far the most prominent 
and popular man in the town.' 

" The character of Colonel Josiah Edson in private life 
was most amiable and virtuous. . . . He had a most 
exalted opinion of the order, discipline, and courage of the 
British army, and of the skill of its officers, and under- 
estimated the resources, enterprise, and genius of the colo- 
nies. He believed there were no troops in the world that 
could successfully contend with the British grenadiers; 
hence he was firm in the faith that any effort on the part of 
the colonies to coerce England would be unavailing, and 
that defeat and disgrace would be inevitable. It is not im- 
probable, therefore, that his political course in the great 

^ "This information was received from Colonel Edward Howard and 
others, who witnessed the occurrence." 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 245 

controversy was more influenced by his fears than by any 
voluntary choice. The splendors of royalty had not dazzled 
his mind nor tempted his aspirations for fame. He had 
neither his fortune to make nor honorable distinction to 
win, for he had acquired both in an eminent degree. At 
the time he fled for protection to the British army, the idea 
of colonial independence had not been discussed as a ques- 
tion seriously proposed, and had he taken no part in the 
exciting debates of the da3% but had given his attention 
only to his private concerns, as many others of the same 
views and apprehensions did, it is more than probable that 
after the fourth of July, 1776, he would cordially have 
supported that grave and dignified measure. But he had 
placed himself in a position from which he could not 
recede; he had fixed his own destiny of grief, sorrow, 
and repentance, had been proscribed and banished for his 
political opinions, and had become a wanderer, an outlaw, 
and an exile from home, and from all the endearments of 
social and domestic life. 

" In the early part of 1776, he accompanied the British 
army from Boston to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and thence 
to Newport, Rhode Island, and thence to Long Island, 
where he died, on the twenty-sixth of December, 1778, 
depressed in spirits and broken-hearted. He had become 
convinced of his errors, and his contrition was deep and 
oppressive, so much so that Death was to him a welcome 
messenger. 

His property, which should have been enjoyed by his 
wife and children, was appropriated by the General Court to 
the use of the province, upon the apologetic grounds that 
he had forfeited it by his fidelity to the British government. 
The confiscation of his property was "in pursuance of a re- 
solve of the Great and General Court, ])assed the nineteenth 
of April, 1776." In the communication, addressed to the 
" Honorable Speaker of the House of Rc] )rcscntati\-es for the 
colony of Massachusetts Ba\-," which bears the attesting 



246 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

signature of "Nathaniel Reynolds, chairman," the particu- 
lars of the sequestration are set forth by the Committee 
authorized to accomplish it. 

" We, the Committee of Correspondence, Safety, and 
Inspection of Bridgewater, have taken into our possession 
all the real and personal estate that we can find which be- 
longed to Josiah Edson, Esq., and which he left in Bridge- 
water when he fled to Boston. The real estate we have 
leased to (his son) Josiah Edson, junior, for and until the 
nineteenth day of April next, after date, for the sum of 
fifty-four pounds, payable partly by his note of hand (bear- 
ing even date with this) to the chairman of the Committee 
for the use of the colony, and also the said Josiah Edson, 
junior, to take care of and provide for his aged mother 
(wife to the said Josiah Edson, Esqr.), a comfortable sup- 
port during the term. The Committee have also in their 
possession a note of hand given by Josiah Edson, junior, for 
the sum of fifteen potmds, for the use of his father's estate, 
real and personal, the year past, by agreement between 
him, the said Josiah Edson, junior, and the Committee then 
of Bridgewater, in consequence of a certain resolve of the 
Province Congress." 

An inventory of Colonel Edson 's property, taken on the 
twenty-seventh of May, 1776, accompanied the communica- 
tion. Among the items listed that define the circum- 
stances of the ostracised loyalist are "one negro man, one 
negro woman, six cows, two heifers one year old each, fifteen 
sheep and nine lambs, . . . one pew in the meeting- 
house, one silver tankard, six silver tea-spoons, eleven pew- 
ter dishes, two dozen pewter plates, one pewter tankard, 
two pewter measures, two pewter porringers, one clock, one 
desk with a bookcase, three tables, eighteen chairs, five 
feather beds and furniture, one large looking-glass, one case 
of twelve bottles, three iron spiders, one pair of iron [fire] 
dogs, one fire pan, three iron trammels, one warming pan, 
three brass candlesticks, one tin candlestick, one pair of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 247 

bellows, one case of knives and forks, one case with forty- 
two volumes on divinity, history, and law, twenty sermon 
books and pamphlets, notes of hand of the value of fifteen 
pounds nineteen shillings and seven pence." 

In this manner "before his death, without notice, with- 
out any specification of crime, and without even the form 
of a trial, or an opportunity for defence, by a public law, in 
which he was named with three hundred and seven others, 
his large estate was confiscated, and he was forbidden to 
return to the colony without leave, under penalty of trans- 
portation and imprisonment, and if he should afterwards 
return without leave he was to be punished as a felon by 
death. 

' ' A committee was appointed and directed by a resolve of 
the General Court, passed on the twenty- third of September, 
1779, to make sale of the confiscated estate of Josiah Edson, 
Esq., late of Bridgewater, an absentee. Thus he was made 
a victim to his loyalty and personal integrity, without hav- 
ing taken up arms against the colonies, a retribution repul- 
sive to both justice and mercy, painfully cruel in its effects, 
and greatly disproportioned to his offence, more consonant 
with the tyranny of a crowned despotism than with the 
benign principles of a free republican government." 

The derisive character of the metrical metaphor — " That 
old simplicity of Edson ' ' — -bestowed upon Colonel Edson, a 
"mandamus councillor," by Trumbull in his epic entitled 
McFingal, cannot be regarded as applicable to the reputa- 
tion of the distinguished and conscientious loyalist. 

" And look our list place men all over, 
Did heav'n appoint our chief Judge, Oliver, 
Fill that high bench with ignoramus. 
Or has it councils by mandamus? 
Who made that wit of water-gruel 
A judge of admiralty, Sewall? 
And were they not mere earthly struggles 
That raised up Murray, say, and Ruggles.'* 



248 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Did heav'n send down, our pains to medicine, 

That old simplicity of Edson, 

Or by election pick out from us 

That Marshfield, Nat. Ray Thomas; 

Or had it any hand in serving 

A Loring, Pepprell, Browne, or Erving?" ^ 



'^ History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, 1850. Vol. 
v., pp. 238, 239, 240, 241, 252, 265-267; Boston, 1854. Vol. vi., pp. 106, 125, 
126, 127, 143, 144, 165, 166, 182, 199, 202, 203, 205, 206; Boston, 1858. Vol. 
vii., pp. 97, 98, 103, 104, 105. — The New England History. By Charles W. 
Elliot. New York, 1857. Vol. ii., pp. 262, 263. — A Genealogical Account of the 
Edsons Early Settled in Bridgewater, with Appendices. Lowell, 1864. Pp.31, 
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, T,?>, 39. — Massachusetts Archives. " Revolutionary Royal- 
ists, 1775-1784." Vol. i., p. 57; vol. ii., pp. 364, 365; in the office of the 
Secretary of State, Boston. — -McFingal: An Epic Poem in Four Cantos. By 
John Trumbull, Esq. Philadelphia, 1791. Canto First : "The Town-Meet- 
ing," p. 19. 



Chapter IX 
Edsons in the Revolutionary War 

1775-1777 

T^HE evidences of things seen in New England, at the 
* close of the year 1774, were no less striking than pe- 
culiar. " The condition of Massachusetts," as remarked by 
an eminent historian, "was anomalous: three hundred 
thousand people continued their usual avocations, and en- 
joyed life and property in undisturbed tranquillity without 
a legislature or executive officers; without sheriffs, judges, 
or justices of the peace. As the supervision of government 
disappeared, each man seemed more and more a law to 
himself ; and as if to show that the world had been governed 
too much, order prevailed in a province where in fact there 
existed no regular government; no administration but by 
committees ; no military officers but those chosen by the 
militia. Yet never were legal magistrates obeyed with 
more alacrity. The selectmen continued their usual func- 
tions ; the services in the churches increased in fervor. . . . 

" But what most animated the countr}^ was the mag- 
nanimity of Boston: 'suffering amazing loss, 1)ut deter- 
mined to endure poverty and death rather than betray 
America and posterity.' Its people, under the eyes of the 
General, disregarding alike his army, his proclamations 
against a provincial congress, and the British statute against 
town-meetings, came together according to their ancient 
forms." 

The British ministry, ach'isod of tlie increasing laxit}' of 

249 



2 so EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the people of the colonies in heeding the behests of his 
Majesty King George the Third, became more urgent to 
coerce them into yielding obedience to his commands. In 
January, 1775, General Gage, who had previously written 
for a reinforcement of at least twenty thousand men, as- 
sured the ministerial officers that "if a respectable force of 
troops were to be seen in the field by the rebellious colo- 
nists, the most obnoxious of the leaders seized, and a pardon 
proclaimed for all others," the government would " come off 
victorious, and with less opposition than ' ' could have been 
"expected a few months" prior to that time. 

" The ministry were self-willed and strangely confident. 
The demand of Gage for twenty thousand men was put 
aside with scorn. ' The violence committed by those who 
have taken up arms in Massachusetts Bay,' wrote" one, " in 
the King's name, 'have appeared to me as the acts of a 
rude rabble, without plan, without concert, and without 
conduct; and therefore I think that a smaller force now, 
if put to the test, would be able to encounter them. The 
first and essential step to be taken towards re-establishing 
government would be to arrest and imprison the principal 
actors and abettors in the provincial congress, whose pro- 
ceedings appear in every light to be treason and rebellion. 
If means be devised to keep the measure secret until the 
moment of execution, it can hardly fail of success. Even 
if it cannot be accomplished without bloodshed, and should 
be a signal for hostilities, I must again repeat, that any 
efforts of the people, unprepared to encounter with a regular 
force, cannot be very formidable. The imprisonment of 
those who shall be made prisoners will prevent their doing 
any further mischief. ' ' 

"The first step towards inspiring terror" taken by the 
British ministry, "was to declare Massachusetts in a state 
of rebellion, and to pledge the Parliament and the whole 
force of Great Britain to its reduction; the next, by pro- 
hibiting the American fisheries, to starve New England; the 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 251 

next, to call out the savages on the rear of the colonies; the 
next, to excite servile insurrection." 

On Thursday, the ninth day of February, 1775, when 
King George the Third, having received the address of Par- 
liament '"that amounted to a declaration of war,' pledged 
himself speedily and effectually to ' enforce obedience to the 
laws and the authority of the supreme legislature, ' the mem- 
bers of the second Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, 
about two hundred and fourteen in number, appointed 
eleven men as their Committee of Safety, charged to resist 
every attempt at executing the acts of Parliament. For 
this purpose they were empowered to take possession of the 
warlike stores of the province, to make returns of the militia 
and minute-men, and to muster as many of the militia as 
they should judge necessary. General officers were ap- 
pointed to command the force that should be assembled. ' ' 

"'Resistance to tyranny,' the Provincial Congress pro- 
claimed to the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay, ' becomes 
the Christian and social duty of each individual. Fleets, 
troops, and every implement of war are sent into the prov- 
ince, to wrest from you that freedom which it is your duty, 
even at the risk of your lives, to hand inviolate to posterity. 
Continue steadfast, and with a proper sense of your de- 
pendence on God, nobly defend those rights which Heaven 
gave, and no man ought to take from us.' " 

"On Sunday, the second of April, 1775, two vessels ar- 
rived at Marblehead with the tidings, that both Houses of 
Parliament had pledged to the King their lives and fortunes 
for the reduction of America, that New England was pro- 
hibited from the fisheries, and that the army of Gage was to 
be largely reinforced. The next morning, the Congress re- 
quired the attendance of all absent members, and desired the 
towns not yet represented to send members without delay. 

"A code for its future army was adopted, and the Com- 
mittee of Safety was authorized to form and pa\- six com- 
panies of artillery. ... It enjoined every town to have 



252 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

a Committee of Correspondence; ordered a day of fasting 
and prayer for the union of the American colonies and di- 
rection to such measures as God would approve ; encouraged 
the poor of Boston to move into the country; sent special 
envoys to each of the other New England colonies to con- 
cert measures for raising an army of defence; and urged 
' the militia and minute-men ' in the several towns to be on 
the alert. It forbade every act that could be interpreted 
as a commencement of hostilities, but resolved unanimously 
that the militia might act on the defensive. If the forces of 
the colony should be called out, the members of the Con- 
gress agreed to repair instantly to Concord. Then, on the 
fifteenth of April, it adjourned, expecting a long and des- 
perate war with the mighty power of Great Britain, yet 
with no treasury but the good- will of the people; not a 
soldier in actual service; hardly ammunition enough for a 
parade day; as for artillery, having scarce more than ten 
cannon of iron, four of brass, and two cohorns; with no 
executive but the Committee of Safety ; no internal govern- 
ment but by Committees of Correspondence; no visible 
centre of authority ; and no distinguished general officer to 
take command of the provincial troops. 

" Gage, who himself had about three thousand effective 
men, learned through his spies the state of the country and 
the ludicrously scanty amount of stores collected by the 
provincial committees at Worcester and Concord. The re- 
port increased his confidence as well as the insolence of his 
officers; and as soon as the members of the Congress had 
gone to their homes, he resolved on striking a blow, as the 
King desired." 

The Edsons in New England exemplified their loyalty to 
each of the successive British sovereigns ruling the Amer- 
ican colonies, as has already been shown in many distinct 
ways, as industrious and enterprising settlers, as trust- 
worthy and dutiful civil officers, and as brave and faith- 
ful volunteers and scouts. Not only were the}^ valorous 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 253 

defenders of the places in which they had their homes, but 
also generous contributors of their means to defray the ex- 
penses of the several wars im])eriling the peace and pros- 
perity of the colonists. Three participated in expeditions 
against the savages on the warpath with King Philip ; one 
in King George 's war ; and fifteen in the long struggle with 
the French and their Indian allies. With no record of anv 
member of the Edson family taking up arms against their 
countrymen during the war of the Revolution, forty-four 
members of it and three of their African servants are regis- 
tered as having battled for the political rights and immuni- 
ties that they and the other liberty-loving inhabitants of 
the thirteen colonies desired to enjoy and have descend to 
their offspring while having homes in North America. 

Particulars of the engagements in which the four-and- 
forty Edsons took part will be presented in this and the fol- 
lowing chapter, together with such designations of parents 
as will, it is believed, serve to establish the identity and 
kinship of these patriotic soldiers of the Revolutionary War. 

"The Lexington alarm," inaugurating the war of the 
Revolution, was preceded by a series of events that sorely 
tried the temper of the colonists who were anxiously waiting 
the coming of the day for taking up arms in defence of their 
liberty. 

On the afternoon of the fifteenth of April, 1775, when the 
Provincial Congress of Massachusetts Bay adjourned, " Gen- 
eral Gage took the light infantry and grenadiers off duty ' ' 
in and around Boston, " and secretly prepared an expedition 
to destroy the colony's stores at Concord," about eighteen 
miles northwest of Boston. " But the attempt had for 
several weeks been expected ; a strict watch had been kept ; 
and signals were concerted to anntjunce the first movement 
of troops for the country." Being timely warned, "the 
Committee of Safety removed a part of the ]jublic stores 
and secreted the cannon." 

On the afternoon of Tuesday, the eighteenth of Ajiril, 



254 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

General Gage sent a number of sergeants in disguise 
" through Roxbury, " and " over the ferry, through Charles- 
town, to reconnoitre and watch the movements of the peo- 
ple, and, at a proper time, to seize and detain all persons on 
the road, whom they might suspect of being engaged in 
carrying intelligence of the intended march of his troops to 
Concord." About ten o'clock that night, "the grenadiers 
and light infantry, not less than eight hundred in number 

. . crossed in the boats of the transport ships from the 
foot of the common to East Cambridge. There they re- 
ceived a day's provisions, and near midnight, after wading 
through wet marshes . . . they took the road through 
West Cambridge to Concord." 

Meanwhile, and before ten o'clock, Dr. Joseph Warren, 
one of the Committee of Public Safety, empowered by the 
second Provincial Congress, " to assemble the militia when- 
ever it was required to resist the execution of certain acts of 
Parliament," "despatched William Dawes through Rox- 
bury to Lexington, and at the same time desired Paul Re- 
vere to set off by way of Charlestown. " 

" On the morning of the nineteenth of April, between 
the hours of twelve and one, the message from Warren 
reached" Samuel Adams and John Hancock, at Lexing- 
ton, "who divined at once the object of the expedition." 
" The alarm had spread so rapidly through Lexington 
that by two o'clock on Wednesday morning the militia 
company had nearly all assembled. Captain John Parker 
commanding it ordered the roll to be called, and every 
man to charge his gun with powder and ball. After re- 
maining on parade for some time, one of the messengers, 
who had been sent toward Boston, returned and reported 
he could not learn that the British regulars were coming. 
The weather being cool, the company were dismissed with 
orders to appear again at the beat of the drum. Some of 
them, whose houses were in the immediate neighborhood of 
the place of parade, went home, but the greater part of the 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 255 

company went into Buckman's tavern, near the meeting- 
house. 

"Adams and Hancock, whose proscription had already 
been divulged, and whose seizure was believed to be in- 
tended, were compelled by persuasion to retire towards 
Woburn." 

In Concord, "about two o'clock in the morning, a peal 
from the belfry of the meeting-house called the inhabitants 
of the place to their town hall. They came forth, young 
and old, with their firelocks, ready to make good the reso- 
lute words of their town debates." 

When intelligence of the close approach of the British 
troops to Lexington was received, " Captain Parker ordered 
alarm guns to be fired and the drum beat to arms." Sixty 
or seventy men were thereupon paraded in two ranks a few 
rods north of the meeting-house. Shortly before five 
o'clock the enemy appeared, and discovering the paraded 
men, came to a halt, charged guns, doubled ranks, and 
advanced at double-quick time. The British officer in com- 
mand, having cried to the motionless militia to lay down 
their arms and disperse, and seeing that they did not do as 
they were bidden, ordered his men to fire. The command 
" was instantly followed, first by a few guns, which did no 
execution, and then by a heavy, close, and deadly discharge 
of musketrv. 

" In the disparity of numbers, " Lexington " common was 
a field of murder, not of battle; Captain Parker, there- 
fore, ordered his men to disperse. Then, and not till then, 
did a few of them, on their own impulse, return the British 
fire. These random shots of the fugitives or dying men did 
no harm. 

"Jonas Parker, the strongest and best wrestler in Lex- 
ington, had promised never to run from British troops ; and 
he kept his vow. A wound brought him on his knees. 
Having discharged his gun, he was preparing to load it 
again, when as sound a heart as ever throbbed for freedom 



256 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

was stilled by a bayonet, and he lay on the post which he 
took at the morning's drum beat. So fell Isaac Muzzey, and 
so died the aged Robert Munroe, the same who, in 1758, 
had been an ensign at Louisburg. Jonathan Harrington, 
junior, was struck in front of his own house, on the north of 
the common. His wife was at a window when he fell. With 
the blood gushing from his breast, he rose in her sight, tot- 
tered, fell again, then crawled on hands and knees toward 
his dwelling; she ran to meet him, but only reached him as 
he expired on their threshold. Caleb Harrington, who had 
gone into the meeting-house for powder, was shot as he 
came out. Samuel Hadley and John Brown were pursued, 
and killed after they had left the green. Asahel Porter, of 
Woburn, who had been taken prisoner by the British on 
the march, endeavoring to escape, was shot within a few 
rods of the common. 

"About seven o'clock, the British marched with rapid 
step under the brilliant sunshine into Concord, the light in- 
fantry along the hills, and the grenadiers in the lower road. 
Left in undisputed possession of the hamlet, they made 
search for stores. To this end, one small party was sent to 
the south bridge over Concord River ; three companies, com- 
prising a hundred or more soldiers, were stationed as a 
guard at the north bridge, while three advanced two miles 
farther, where arms were thought to have been concealed. 
But they found there nothing to destroy except some car- 
riages for cannon. 

" Between nine and ten o'clock, the Concord and Lincoln 
companies of minute-men on the rising ground above Con- 
cord Bridge had increased to more than four hundred. Of 
these there were twenty-five minute-men from Bedford, 
others from Westford, others from Littleton, from Carlisle, 
and from Chelmsford. The Acton company came last, and 
formed on the right. 

" Near the base of the hill. Concord River flows lan- 
guidly in a winding channel, and was approached by a 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 257 

causeway over the wet ground of its left l)ank. The by- 
road from the hill, on wlhch the Americans liad rallied, ran 
southerl_\- till it met the causeway at right angles. The 
Americans saw before them within gunshot British troops 
holding possession of their l)ridge, and in the distance a 
still larger number occupying their town, which from the 
rising smoke seemed to have been set on fire. 

" In the yard of an inn the British found two twenty-four 
pounders and these cannon they spiked. They also dis- 
covered sixty barrels of flour which they partly damaged in 
their attempts to shatter the barrels, and into a mill-pond 
they threw five hundred pounds of ball ammimition. They 
l)urned a liberty pole and several artillery carriages, and 
rifled a number of private dwellings. The court-house was 
set on fire, but was not much injured as the flames were 
soon extinguished. 

" Seeing the smoke ascending from the fires in the place, 
the American minute-men and militia, by a common im- 
pulse to protect the propert}^ of the inhabitants, descended 
to the causeway leading to the bridge held by the British. 
They, perceiving the intention of the Americans, began 
tearing up the planks to prevent their passage over the 
Ijridge, and, to deter them, fired several shots at the ad- 
vancing colonists, that were followed by a volley. Then 
the Americans returned the fire, killing two of the invaders 
and wounding several; and losing themselves two killed 
and two wounded. 

"At noon the British began retreating toward Lexing- 
ton. When passing Merriam's Corner, a mile or more east 
of Concord, the}/ encountered a company of Reading minute- 
men and one of Billerica militia which had been joined by a 
part of the armed Americans from Concord, and faced about 
and fired a volley at them. 'I'his knl to an engagement, 
which became an intermittent ])atUe I hence to Cliarles- 
town, 'carried on witli httle or no mililar\- discipline or 

order on the ])art oL the Americans (hn-ing the remainder of 

17 



2 58 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the day. Each sought his own place and opportunity to 
attack and annoy the enemy from behind trees, rocks, 
fences, and buildings as seemed most convenient.' Acces- 
sions of companies of minute-men and militia from Lexing- 
ton, Sudbury, Woburn, Cambridge, Roxbury, Dorchester, 
Brookline, Needham, Watertown, Dedham, Medford, 
Charlestown, Lynn, Danvers, and other towns, from hour 
to hour greatly increased the jeopardy of the fleeing and 
fighting British force. Its retreat along the highway to 
Charlestown finally became a humiliating and disastrous 
rout. The pursuit of the fatigued and harassed regulars 
ended about sunset. 

" The actual loss to the British in this expedition was 
seventy-three killed, one hundred and seventy-four wound- 
ed, and twenty-six missing — the greater part of whom were 
taken prisoners. Of the whole loss, eighteen were commis- 
sioned officers, and two hundred and fifty non-commissioned 
officers and men. The loss of the Americans was forty-nine 
killed, thirty-nine wounded, and five missing. 

" Darkness closed upon the country and upon the town, 
but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of 
horses transmitted the war-message from hand to hand, 
till village repeated it to village, the sea to the backwoods, 
the plains to the highlands; and it was never suffered to 
droop, till it had been borne north, and south, and east, and 
west, throughout the land. 

" The people of Massachusetts had not waited for the call 
of their Committee of Safety on the morning of the twen- 
tieth of April. The country people, as soon as they heard . 
the cry of innocent blood from the ground, snatched their 
firelocks from the walls; and wives, and mothers, and sis- 
ters took ])art in preparing the men of their households to 
go forth to the war. Their country .was in danger; their 
brethren were slaughtered; their arms alone employed 
their attention." ^ 

From the town of Bridgewater, "on the alarm of the 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AM1:RTCA 259 

nineteenth of A])ril,"' marched Ca])tain Josiah Hayden's 
company of minute-men, in which Barnabas, the third son 
of James and Esther (Allen) Edson, was a private; Jacob, 
the eldest son of Benjamin and Ann (Thayer) Edson, was 
also one; and Nathan, the eldest son of Nathan and Mary 
(Sprague) Edson, also served in the same ])osition. Erom 
that town also marched, at the same time, (\'i])tain Robert 
Orr's company of minute-men, in which, as a ])rivate, was 
John, the eldest son of John and Hannah (Allen) Edson. 
From the town of Brookfield, marched, on the nineteenth of 
April, Captain Jonathan Barns 's company of minute-men, 
in which, as a fifer, was Hosea, the fourth son of Doctor 
Elijah and Anne (Packard) Edson; and probably from the 
same place, and on the same day, Captain John Crawford's 
compan^s in which was, as a private, Nathan, the eldest son 
of Ebenezer and Lucy (Packard) Edson. From the town of 
Springfield, marched, on the twentieth of April, Major An- 
drew Colton's company of minute-men, in which, as a pri- 
vate, was Abijah, the eldest son of Abijah and Susanna 
(Snow) Edson; and in which also, as a private, was Samuel, 
the eldest son of Samuel and Martha (Perkins) Edson. From 
the town of Ashburnham, marched, on the alarm of the 
nineteenth of April, Captain Jonathan Gates's com])any of 
minute-men, in which, as a private, was Daniel, the third 
son of Doctor Elijah and Anne (Packard) Edson; and from 
there also marched, on the nineteenth of Ajiril, Captain De- 
liverance Davis's com])an\', in which, as a drummer, was 
their eldest son Elijah. I^'rom the town of Stoughton, 
marched, on the alarm of the nineteenth of A]jril, Captain 
Peter Talipot's com])an\-, in which, as a ])rivate. was Daniel, 
the third son of A])el and Margaret (Conant) Iildson. And 
from the town of Hatfield, marched, on the twent\-lirst of 
A])ril, in response to the alarm, Perez Gra\-es's c-om]»any. in 
wliicli, as a ])rivate, was Jonathan, the second son of Jona- 
than and Melietabel (Lillx') Ivlson. "For llie rchcl of Bos- 
ton in the Lexington alarm," marelicd Ze])haniah .Mden's 



26o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

company, from the town of Stafford, Hartford County, 
colony of Connecticut, in which company was Nathan, the 
second son of Abijah and Susanna (Snow) Edson/ 

These thirteen patriotic kinsmen served with their re- 
spective companies terms of enhstment varying in time 
from two to nineteen days. They, as has truthfully been 
said of the New England volunteers, "were men of sub- 
stantial worth, of whom " five "represented a household. 
The members of the several companies were well known to 
each other as brothers, kindred, and townsmen; known to 
the old men who remained at home, and to all the matrons 
and maidens. They were sure to be remembered in the 
weekly exercises of the congregations, and morning and 
evening in the usual family devotions, they were com- 
mended with fervent piety to the protection of Heaven. 
Every young soldier lived and acted, as it were, under the 
keen observation of all those among whom he had grown up, 
and was sure that his conduct would occupy the tongues of 
his village companions while he was in the field, and perhaps 
be remembered his life long. The ' Camp of Liberty ' was a 
gathering in amis of schoolmates, neighbors, and friends; 
and Boston was beleaguered round from Roxbury to Chel- 
sea by an tmorganized, fluctuating mass of men, each with 
his own musket and his little store of cartridges, and such 
provisions as he brought with him, or as were sent after him, 
or were contributed by the people round about. 

"The British officers, from the sense of their own weak- 



^ History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, 1858. Vol. 
vii., pp. 184, 185, 209, 210, 218, 219, 222, 227, 228, 229, 278, 280, 281, 282, 2S8, 
289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 298, 299, 300, 302, 311, 313. — History of the Battle at 
Lexington. By Elias Phinney. Boston, 1825. Pp. 15, 18, 19. — History of the 
Town of Lexington. By Charles Hudson. Boston, 1868. Pp. 194, 211. — Mas- 
sachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. A compilation from the 
Archives prepared and published by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. In 
accordance with chapter 100. Resolves of 189 1. Boston, 1899. Pp- 223, 224, 
225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230. — -The Record of Connecticut Men in the Military and 
Naval Service during the War of the Revolution, 1 77 5-1 783. Edited by Henry P. 
Johnston. Hartford, 1889. P. 21. 



EDSONS IN ExNGLAND AND AAiERiCA 261 

ness, and from fear oi' the American marksmen, dared not 
order a sallv. Their confinement was the more irksome, 
for it came of a sudden before their magazines had been 
filled; and was followed by ' an immediate stop to supplies 
of every kind.' The troops, in consequence, suffered se- 
verely from unwholesome diet ; their commanders fretted 
with bitter mortification. They had scoffed at the i\mer- 
icans as cowards who would run at their sight; and they 
had saved themselves from destruction only by the rapidity 
of their retreat. Reinforcements and three new general 
officers were already on the Atlantic, and these would have 
to be received into straitened c|uarters by a defeated army. 
They knew that England, and even the ministers, would 
condemn the inglorious expedition which had brought 
about so sudden and so fatal a change. As if to l:)rand in 
their shame, the officers shrunk from avowing their own 
acts; and though no one would say that he had seen the 
Americans fire first, they tried to make it pass current that 
a handful of countrymen at Lexington had l^egun a fight 
with a detachment that outnumbered them as tweh'e to 
one. 

" Without stores, or cannon, or su]3plies even of powder, 
or of money, Massachusetts, by its congress, on the twenty- 
second of April, resolved unanimously that a New England 
army of thirty thousand men should be raised, and estab- 
lished its own proportion at thirteen thousand six hundred. 
The term of enlistment was fixed for the last of December. 

Under this act, Samuel Edson, on the twenty-ninth of 
April; Nathan, the eldest son of Nathan and Mary (Sprague) 
Edson, on the first of May; Jonathan Edson, on the second; 
Hosea, on the third; Abijah Edson, on the sixth; and 
Daniel, the third son of Doctor Elijah and Anne (Pac-kard) 
Edson, on the seventeenth of July; enlisted and again went 
into the field and took part in the siege of Boston. The six 
had three other of their kinsmen witli tliem tluTc: Thomas, 
the eldest son of ()])e(l and .Martlia Thomas I^Mson, of the 



262 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

town of Taunton, who, on the second of May, enUsted as a 
private in Captain Silas Cobb's company in Colonel Tim- 
othy Walker's regiment; Caleb, the fifth son of Doctor 
Elijah and Anne (Packard) Edson,of Cockermouth (Groton), 
New Hampshire, who enlisted on the eighth, and became a 
fifer in Captain Aaron Kinsman's company in Colonel John 
Stark's regiment; Ebenezer, the eighth son of Benjamin 
and Joanna (Orcutt) Edson, of the town of Bridgewater, who 
enlisted on the thirtieth of June, and served as a private in 
Captain John Porter's company in Colonel Paul Dudley 
Sargent's regiment. In response to the call of the Legisla- 
ture of the colony of Connecticut, Nathan, the second son 
of Abijah and Susanna (Snow) Edson, enlisted on the ninth 
of May and served as a private in Captain Roger Enos's 
company in General Joseph Spencer's regiment to the eigh- 
teenth of December. 

" Of the men of Massachusetts who first came down as 
volunteers, the number varied from day to day. Many of 
them returned home almost as soon as they came, for want 
of provisions or clothes, or because they had not waited to 
put their affairs in order. Of those who enlisted in the 
Massachusetts army, a very large number absented them- 
selves on furlough." 

"The inhabitants of Boston suffered an accumulation 
of sorrows, brightened only by the hope of the ultimate re- 
lief of all America. Gage made them an offer that if they 
would promise not to join in an attack on his troops, and 
would lodge their arms with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall, 
the men, women, and children, with all their effects, should 
have a safe-conduct out of the town. The proposal was 
accepted. For several days the road to Roxbury was 
thronged with wagons and trains of wretched exiles; but 
they were not allowed to take with them any provisions; 
and nothing could be more affecting than to see the helpless 
families come out without anything to eat. The provin- 
cial congress took measures for distributing five thousand 



EDSONS IX EXC.LAXI) AXl) AMERICA 263 

of the poor among the villages of the interior. But the 
Lovalists of Boston, of whom two lumdred volunteered to 
enter the King's ser\'iee, desired to detain the people as 
hostages; Gage therefore soon violated his ])ledge; and 
mam^ respected citizens, children whose fathers were a1:«- 
sent, widows, unemployed mechanics, persons who had no 
protectors to provide for their escape, remained in town 
to share the hardships of a siege, ill provided, and exposed 
to the insults of an exasperated enemy. Words cannot 
describe their sufferings." 

" No choice was left to the Massachusetts Committee of 
Safety l)ut to dri\'e out the British army, or ]5erish in the 
attempt." 

" On the twenty-fifth of May, Lieutenant-General Wil- 
liam. Howe, Lieutenant-General Henry Clinton, and Lieu- 
tenant-General John Burgoyne, arrived at Boston with 
re-iiiforcements. They brought their angling rods, and they 
found themselves pent up in a narrow peninsula ; they had 
believed themselves sure of taking possession of a continent 
with a w^elcome from the great body of the people, and 
thev had no reception but as enemies, and no outlet from 
town but by the sea. 

" Massachusetts selected Artemas Ward to be general-in- 
chief, John Thomas to be lieutenant-general, and Richard 
Gridley, an experienced soldier and engineer, to organize 
artillery and act as engineer-in-chief." 

The second general congress of the representatives of 
the people of the thirteen North- American colonies took the 
first steps to organize the American Continental army, by 
appointing, on the fifteenth of June, George Washington 
general and commander-in-chief of " all the continental 
forces, raised or to be raised for the defence of American 
liberty." Two da>'s later. Artemas Ward of Massachusetts 
was chosen first major-general, Charles Lee of Virginia, 
second major-general, and Horatio Gates, also of Virginia, 
adjutant-general, hax'ing tlie rank of brigadier-general. On 



264 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the nineteenth of June, PhiHp vSchuyler of New York 
was appointed third major-general, and Israel Putnam of 
Connecticut, fourth major-general. Six days after his 
appointment. General Washington departed from Phila- 
delphia for Cambridge, and, on the third of July, took 
command there of the Continental army. 

Meanwhile the report that General ^Gage intended to 
occupy the heights at Charlestown and Dorchester having 
been considered by the Massachusetts Committee of Safety 
and the Council of War, a joint committee was appointed to 
view them, especially the heights at Charlestown. The 
committee on the twelfth of May, besides advising the con- 
struction of breastworks at several points, recommended 
the building of " a strong redoubt on Bunker Hill, provided 
with cannon to annoy the enemy either going out by land 
or by water." On the fifteenth of June, the Committee of 
Safety passed the following resolution: 

" Whereas, it appears of importance to the safety of this 
colony, that possession of the hill called Bunker's Hill, in 
Charlestown, be securely kept and defended; and also, 
some one hill or hills on Dorchester Neck be likewise se- 
cured: therefore, resolved, unanimously, that it be recom- 
mended to the Council of War, that the above mentioned 
Bunker's Hill be maintained, by sufficient forces posted 
there ; and as the particular situation of Dorchester Neck is 
unknown to this committee, they advise that the Council of 
War take and pursue such steps, respecting the same, as to 
them shall appear to be for the security of this colony. ' ' 

The right wing of the American army lay, at that time, 
at Roxbury, under Lieu tenant-General John Thomas, 
where were stationed the Massachusetts regiments sever- 
ally commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel John Bailey (earlier 
by Lieutenant-General Thomas) , Colonels Ebenezer Learned, 
John Fellows, Theophilus Cotton, Timothy Walker, Tim- 
othy Danielson, Joseph Read, and Lemuel Robinson; the 
Rhode Island forces under Brigadier-General Nathaniel 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 265 

Greene, and the greater ])art of Brigadier-General Joseph 
Spencer's regiment of Connecticut troops, at Jamaica 
Plains. The centre of the army, consisting of fifteen Mas- 
sachusetts regiments, severally under the command of 
Colonels William Prescott, James Frye, Ebenezer Bridge, 
Moses Little, Ephraim Doolittle, Samuel Gerrish, Thomas 
Gardner, Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Ward, Colonels 
Jonathan Brewer, John Nixon, Benjamin Ruggles Wood- 
bridge, Asa Whitcomb, James Scammon, John Mansfield, 
and John Patterson; the artillery battalion under Colonel 
Richard Gridley, and Brigadier-General Israel Putnam's 
regiment, with other Connecticut troops, lay at Cambridge, 
where Major-General Artemas Ward had his headquarters; 
the left wing was somewhat scattered: three companies of 
Colonel Samuel Gerrish 's regiment were at Chelsea, Colonel 
John vStark's regiment was at Medford, and Colonel James 
Reed's at Charlestown Neck, with sentinels reaching to 
Penny Ferry and Bunker Hill. 

Abijah, Caleb, Hosea, Jonathan, Nathan of Bridge- 
water, Nathan of Stafford, Samuel, and Thomas Edson, 
having enlisted in companies which were in the regiments 
severally commanded by Colonels Jonathan Brewer, John 
Stark, Ebenezer Learned, Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge, 
Timothy Danielson, Timothy Walker, Joseph S]:)encer, and 
Lieutenant-Colonel John Bailey, it seems evident that the 
eight ]3atriots bearing the surname of Edson were acti\-ely 
engaged in the ever-memorable battle of Bunker Ilill. 

By his later enlistment, on the thirtieth of June, in Cap- 
tain John Porter's company, Ebenezer Edson was asso- 
ciated as a private with Colonel Paul Dudle\' Sargent's 
regiment, and Daniel Edson, b\' enlisting on the seven- 
teenth of July, in Captain David Wilder 's compau)-, with 
Colonel Asa Whitcomb 's regiment. 

Friday, the sixteenth of June, liaxing been designated 
for the construction of fortifications on Bunker Hill, jjarts 
of \hc regiments of Colonels Prescott, Frye, anel Bridge, and 



266 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

a fatigue-party of two hundred Connecticut troops, together 
with Captain Gridley's artillery company, aggregating 
about twelve hundred men, under the command of Colonel 
William Prescott, left Cambridge Common, about nine 
o'clock at night, for Charlestown. After a consultation on 
arriving there, it was determined that Breed's Hill was a 
better position for a line of intrenchments, and the work of 
making the same was begun about midnight on that rise of 
ground. The earthworks, six feet in height, that were 
thrown up, were discovered by the British at daylight, on 
the seventeenth of June. Fire was opened immediately 
upon them by one of the British men-of-war anchored in 
sight of Breed's Hill. Not long afterward a British battery 
of six guns and howitzers on Copp's Hill, in Boston, and 
several English men-of-war, within gunshot of the intrench- 
ments, began firing upon them, but with little harm to 
them or the men engaged in strengthening them. 

About eleven o'clock, the regiments of Colonels John 
Stark and James Reed of New Hampshire were sent for- 
ward to reinforce Colonel Prescott 's body of troops. About 
noon a small force of Americans began throwing up a 
breastwork on Bunker Hill. Meanwhile a number of Brit- 
ish regiments and companies of grenadiers and light in- 
fantry under General William Howe were embarking on 
barges to attack the American intrenchments on Breed's 
Hin. 

"The sun was shining in meridian splendor; and the 
scarlet uniforms, the glistening armor, the brazen artillery, 
the regular movements of the boats, the flashes of fire, 
and the belchings of smoke formed a spectacle brilliant 
and imposing. The army landed in good order at Moul- 
ton's Point, about one o'clock, without the slightest mo- 
lestation, and immediately formed in three lines. General 
Howe, after reconnoitring the American works, applied to 
General Gage for a reinforcement, and while waiting for it 
to arrive, many of his troops quietly dined. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 267 

" When the inteUiiyence of the landinij of the British 
troops reached Cambridge, there was suddenly great noise 
and confusion. The bells were rung, the drums beat to 
arms, and adjutants rode hurriedly from ]:)oint to point, 
with orders for troops to march and o])pose the enemy. 
General Ward reserved his own regiment, Patterson's, 
Gardner's, and part of Bridge's regiments, to be prepared 
for any attack on Caml)ridge, but ordered the remainder of 
the Massachusetts forces to Charlestown. General Putnam 
ordered on the remainder of the Connecticut troo])S. Colo- 
nel Gardner's regiment was directed to march to Patter- 
son's station, opposite Prospect Hill. A large part of these 
forces, owing to various causes, failed to reach the lines." 

'■ The movements of the British, along the margin of 
Mystic Ri^■er, indicated an intention of flanking the Amer- 
icans, and of surrounding the redoubt. To prevent this, 
Colonel Prescott ordered the artillery, with two field-pieces, 
and Captain Thomas Knowlton with the Connecticut 
troops, to leave the intrenchments, march down the hill, 
and oppose the enemy's right wing. Captain Knowlton 
took a position near the base of Bunker Hill, six hundred 
feet in the rear of the redoubt, behind a fence, one half of 
which was stone, w4th two rails of wood. He then made, a 
little distance in front of this, another parallel line of fence, 
and filled the space between them w^ith ne\vl\- cut grass 
lying in the fields. 

"While Captain Knowlton 's ])art\' was doing this, l)e- 
tween two and three o'clock, Colonel John vSuirk, willi his 
regiment, arri\'ed at the Neck, which was then enfiladed l)y 
a galling fire from the enemy's ships and batteries. Cap- 
tain Henry Dearborn, who w^as by the side of the Colo- 
nel, suggested to him the expediency of (luickening liis 
stcji across; but Stark replied, 'One fresh man in action 
is worth ten fatigue(l ones,' and marched steadil\- o\-er. 
General Putnam ordcMX'd ])nrt of these troo])s to labor on 
the works begun on Ihinkcr iliH. wliile Coloni'l Sl;irk. :\\'{cr 



268 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

an animated address to his men, led the remainder to the 
position Captain Knowlton had taken, and they aided in 
extending the line of the fence breastwork to the water's 
edge, by throwing up a stone wall on the beach. Colonel 
Reed left the Neck, and marched over Bunker Hill, and 
took position near Colonel Stark, at the rail fence. 

"The defences of the Americans, at three in the after- 
noon, were still in a rude, unfinished state. The redoubt 
on the spot where the monument stands was about eight 
rods square. Its strongest side, the front, facing the set- 
tled part of the town, was made with projecting angles, and 
protected the south side of the hill. The eastern side com- 
manded an extensive field. The north side had an open 
passageway. A breastwork, beginning a short distance 
from the redoubt, and on a line with its eastern side, ex- 
tended about one hundred yards north towards a slough. 
A sally-port, between the south end of the breastwork and 
the redoubt, was protected by a blind. These works were 
raised about six feet from the level of the ground, and had 
platforms of wood, or steps made of earth, for the men to 
stand on when they should fire. The south corner of the 
fence already described was about two hundred yards, on 
a diagonal line, in the rear of the north corner of the breast- 
work. This line was slightly protected; a part of it, how- 
ever, — about one hundred yards, — ^between the slough and 
the rail fence, was open to the approach of infantry. It 
was the weakest part of the defences. On the right of the 
redoubt, along a cartway, a fence was made similar to the 
one on the left. The redoubt and breastwork constituted 
a good defence against cannon and musketry, but the 
fences were hardly more than a shadow of protection. 

"These defences were lined nearly in the following man- 
ner: The original detachments, under Colonel Prescott, 
except the Connecticut troops, were at the redoubt and 
breastwork. They were joined, just previous to the action, 
by portions of Massachusetts regiments, under Colonels 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 269 

Brewer, Nixon, Woodbridge, Little, and Major Moore, and 
one company of artillery — Callender 's. General Warren took 
post in the redoubt. Captain (iridley's artillcr)' company, 
after discharging a few ineffectual shot from a corner of the 
redoubt towards Copp's Hill, moved to the exposed position 
between the breastwork and rail fence, where it was joined 
b\' the other artillery company under Captain John Cal- 
lender. Captain Benjamin Perkins' company, of Little's 
regiment, and a few other troops. Captain John Nutting's 
company, — recalled from Charlestown after the British 
landed, — and part of Captain Nathaniel Warner's com- 
pany, lined the cartway on the right of the redoubt. The 
Connecticut troops, under Captain Knowlton, the New 
Hampshire forces, under Colonels Stark and Reed, and 
a few Massachusetts troops were at the rail fence. Gen- 
eral Putnam was here when the action commenced, and 
General Seth Pomeroy, armed with a musket, served 
here as a volunteer. Three companies — Captain Adam 
Wheeler's, of Doolittle's regiment. Captain Josiah Crosby's, 
of Reed's regiment, and a company from Woodbridge 's 
regiment — were stationed in Main Street, at the base of 
Breed's Hill, and constituted the extreme right of the 
Americans. Though this statement may be in the main 
correct, yet such is the lack of precision in the authorities 
that accuracy cannot be affirmed. The Massachusetts re- 
inforcements, as they came on the field, appear to have 
marched to the redoubt, and were directed to take the most 
advantageous positions. In doing this, parts of regiments, 
and even companies, that came on together, broke their 
ranks, divided, and subsequently fought in various parts of 
the field, in jjlatocnis or as individuals rather than under 
regular commands." 

*' Asa Whitcomb's regiment, of Worcester, luul but few 
companies in the battle. One account, by a soldier, slates 
that Captain Benjamin Hastings, iKdonging to it, led on a 
company of thirt\"-four, and took |)ost at the rail fence. 



2 70 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

This name does not occur in a return dated June 3d. Two 
companies, Captains Gideon Burt's and David Wilder 's, 
were probably in the battle." 

Colonel Timothy Walker's regiment, which just before 
the action had been stationed at Roxbury, evidently took 
part in it. 

" Before General Howe moved from his first position, he 
sent out strong flank guards, and directed his field-pieces to 
play on the American lines. The fire from Copp's Hill, 
from the ships, and from the batteries, now centred on the 
intrenchments ; while a furious cannonade and bombard- 
ment from Boston occupied the attention of the right wing 
of the American arm^^ at Roxbury. The fire upon the 
lines was but feebly returned from Gridley's and Callen- 
der's field-pieces. Gridley's guns were soon disabled, and 
he drew them to the rear. Captain Callender, alleging that 
his cartridges were too large for his pieces, withdrew to 
Bunker Hill. Here he met General Putnam, who ordered 
him to return. Callender returned; l^ut soon left his post, 
and was soon deserted by his men. About this time. Cap- 
tain John Ford's company, of Bridge's regiment, came on 
the field, and, at the pressing rec[uest of General Putnam, 
drew the deserted field-pieces to the rail fence. Meantime 
Colonel Prescott detached Lieutenant-Colonel John Robin- 
son and Major Henry Wood, each with a party, to flank the 
enemy. Both behaved with courage and prudence. Cap- 
tain Benjamin Walker, with a, few men, probably of one of 
these parties, met with the British near the navy yard, and 
fired from the cover of buildings and fences. 

"The general discharge of artillery was intended to 
cover the advance of the British columns. They moved 
forward in two divisions, — General Howe with the right 
wing, to penetrate the American line at the rail fence, and 
cut off a retreat from the redoubt, — General Pigot, with the 
left wing, to storm the breastwork and redoubt." 

" General Howe, in the meantime, led the right wing 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 271 

against the rail fence. The light infantry moved along 
the shore of Mystic River, to turn the extreme left of the 
American line, while the grenadiers advanced directly in 
front. The Americans first opened on them with their 
field-pieces (Callender's) with great effect, some of the dis- 
charges being directed by Putnam; and when the advan- 
cing troops deployed into line, a few, as at the redoubt, fired 
without waiting for the word, when Putnam hastened to 
the spot, and threatened to cut down the next man who 
disobeyed. This drew the enemy's fire, which they con- 
tinued with the regularity of troops on parade; but their 
balls passed over the heads of the Americans. At length 
the officers gave the word, when the fire from the American 
line was given with great effect. ... So great was the 
carnage, that the columns, a few moments before so proud 
and firm in their array, were disconcerted, partly broken, 
and then retreated. Many of the Americans were in favor 
of pursuing them, and some, with exulting huzzas, jumped 
over the fence for this purpose, l)Ut were prevented by the 
l)rudence of their officers. 

" And now moments of joy succeeded the long hours of 
toil, anxiety, and peril. The American volunteer saw the 
veterans of England fly before his fire, and felt a new con- 
fidence in himself. The result was obtained, too, with ])ut 
little loss on his side. Colonel Prescott mingled freely 
among his troops, praised their good conduct, and con- 
gratulated them on their success. He felt confident that 
another attack would soon be made, and he renewed his 
caution to reserve fire until he gave the command. He 
found his men in high spirits, and elated by the retreat. In 
their eyes the regulars were no longer in\'incible. " 

General Howe in a short tun? rallied his troops, and im- 
mediatel}' ordered another assault. They marched in the 
same order as l)efore, and continued to fire as the\' ap- 
proached the lines. But, in addition to the previous ol)- 
stacles, they were obliged to ste}) ()\-cr the bodies of their 



272 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

fallen countrymen. The artillery did more service in this 
attack. It moved along the narrow road, between the 
tongue of land and Breed's Hill, until within three hundred 
yards of the rail fence, and nearly on a line with the breast- 
works, when it opened a severe fire to cover the advance of 
the infantry. The American officers, grown confident in 
the success of their manoeuvre, ordered their men to with- 
hold their fire tmtil the enemy were within five or six rods 
of the works. 

" Charlestown, in the meantime, had been set on fire, — 
in the square by shells thrown from Copp's Hill, and in the 
easterly part by a party of marines from the British man- 
of-war Somerset. As the buildings were chiefly of wood, 
the conflagration spread with great rapidity." 

" The burning of the town neither intimidated the Amer- 
icans nor covered the attack on their lines. The wind 
directed the smoke so as to leave a full view of the approach 
of the British columns, which kept firing as they advanced. 
Colonels Brewer, Nixon, and Buckminster were wounded, 
and Major Moore was mortally wounded. In general, how- 
ever, the balls of the British did but little execution, as 
their aim was bad, and the intrenchments protected the 
Americans. At length, at the prescribed distance, the fire 
was again given, which, in its fatal impartiality, prostrated 
whole ranks of officers and men. The enemy stood the 
shock, and continued to advance with great spirit; but 
the ceaseless stream of fire that issued from the whole 
American line was even more destructive than before. Gen- 
eral Howe, opposite the rail fence, was in the hottest of 
it. Two of his aids, and other officers near him, were 
shot down, and at times he was left almost alone. His 
officers were seen to remonstrate and to threaten, and 
even to prick and strike the men to urge them on. But 
it was in vain. The British were compelled again to give 
way, and they retreated in even greater disorder than 
before, — -many running towards the boats. The ground 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 273 

in front of the American works was covered with the 
killed and wounded. 

" So long a time elapseb defore the British came up 
again, that some of the officers thought they would not 
renew the attack. General Putnam was on Bunker Hill 
and in the rear of it urging forward the reinforcements. 
While at Bunker Hill, at this time, there were many evi- 
dences of serious complications arising from unserved or- 
ders, misdirection, and demoralized bodies of retreating 
men; good order prevailed at the redoubt. Colonel Pres- 
cott remained at his post, determined in his purpose, un- 
daunted in his bearing, inspiring his command with hope 
and confidence, and yet chagrined, that, in this hour of 
peril and glory, adequate support had not reached him. 
He passed round the lines to encourage his men, and as- 
sured them that if the British were once more driven back 
they could not be rallied again. His men cheered him as 
they replied, ' We are ready for the redcoats again ! ' But 
his worst apprehensions, as to ammunition, were realized, 
as the report was made to him that a few artillery cart- 
ridges constituted the whole stock of powder on hand. He 
ordered them to be opened, and the powder to be distributed. 
He charged his soldiers ' not to waste a kernel of it, but to 
make certain that every shot should tell. ' He directed the 
few who had bayonets to be stationed at the points most 
likely to be scaled. These were the only preparations it 
was in his power to make to meet his powerful antagonist. 

" General Howe, exasperated at the repeated repulses 
of his troops, resolved to make another assault. The Brit- 
ish general had learned to respect his enemy, and adopted a 
wiser mode of attack. He ordered the men to lay aside 
their knapsacks, to mox^e forward in column, to reserve 
their fire, to rel}' on the bayonet, to direct their main attack 
on the redoubt, and to push the artilhn-\' forward to a posi- 
tion that wovild enable it to rake the breastwork. 

"When Colonel Prescott saw the new dispositions of his 

18 



274 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

antagonist, the artillery wheeling into its murderous posi- 
tion, and the columns withholding their fire, he well under- 
stood his intention to concentrate his whole force on the 
redoubt, and believed that it must inevitably be carried. 
He thought, however, that duty, honor, and the interest of 
the country required that it should be defended to the last 
extremity, although at a certain sacrifice of many lives. In 
this trying moment, he continued to give his orders coolly. 
Most of his men had remaining onh^ one round of ammuni- 
tion, and few more than three rounds, and he directed 
them to reserve their fire until the British were within 
twenty yards. At this distance a deadly volley was poured 
upon the advancing columns, which made them waver for 
an instant, but they sprang forward without returning it. 
The American fire soon slackened for want of means, while 
the British columns of Generals Clinton and Pigot reached a 
position on the southern and eastern sides of the redoubt, 
where they were protected by its walls. It was now at- 
tacked on three sides at once. 

" Prescott ordered those who had no bayonets to retire 
to the back part of it, and fire on the enemy as they showed 
themselves on the parapet. A soldier of noble bearing 
mounted the southern side, and had barely shouted, ' The 
day is ours ! ' when he was shot down, and the whole front 
rank shared his fate. But the defenders had spent their 
ammunition, another cannon cartridge furnishing the pow- 
der for the last muskets that were fired; and its substitute, 
stones, revealed their weakness, and filled the enemy with 
hope. The redoubt was soon successfully scaled. General 
Pigot, by the aid of a tree, mounted a corner of it, and was 
closely followed by his men, when one side of it literally 
bristled with bayonets. The conflict was now carried on 
hand to hand. Many stood and received wounds with 
swords and bayonets. But the British continued to enter, 
and were advancing towards the Americans, when Colonel 
Prescott gave the order to retreat. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 275 

" The retiring troops passed between two di\4sions of the 
British, one of which had turned the northeastern end of 
the breastwork, and the other had come round the angle of 
the redoubt ; but they were too much exhausted to use the 
bayonet effectuah}-, and the combatants, for fifteen or twenty 
rods of the redoubt, were so mingled together that firing 
would have destroyed friend and foe. The British, with 
cheers, took possession of the works, l)ut inimediately formed, 
and delivered a destructive fire upon the retreating troops. 

" In the meantime, the Americans at the rail fence, un- 
der Stark, Reed, and Knowlton," having been reinforced, 
" maintained their ground with great firmness and intrepid- 
ity, and successful!}^ resisted every attempt to turn their 
flank. This line was nobly defended. The force here did a 
great service, for it saved the main body, which was retreat- 
ing in disorder from the redoubt, from being cut off by the 
enemy. When it w^as perceived at the rail fence that the 
force under Colonel Prescott had left the hill, these brave 
men 'gave ground,' but with more regularity than could 
have been expected of troops who had been for so short a 
time under discipline, and many of whom never before had 
seen an engagement. 

"The British troops, about five o'clock, with a parade 
of triumph, took possession of the hill." They had little 
cause for exultation, for they had lost in the short action 
226 killed and 828 wounded, forming a total of 1054, while 
the Americans had suffered a loss of 1 1 5 killed, 305 wounded, 
and 30 captured, aggregating 450. 

"The extraordinary news of the l:)attle of Bunker Hill 
naturally created astonishment and alarm; and the da\' 
following — Sunday, the eighteenth of June — was charac- 
terized around Boston by exciting rumors, intense anxiety, 
and painful suspense. A circular of the Committee of 
Safety, stating that the British troops were nioxing into the 
country, and calling U])on the militia to niaiTh forthwith to 
Cambridge, though soon countermandcMl, ser\'ed to increase 



2 76 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the excitement. The mihtia promptly repaired to the 
camp. Thousands accompanied them to verify the grave 
reports, or to learn the fate of friends, or to aid in prevent- 
ing further inroads of the enemy. 

" In Boston, there was hardly less distress or less alarm. 
The remains of the gallant officers, the hundreds of as gal- 
lant privates, that were borne through the streets, together 
with the lamentations of the mourners, made up heart- 
rending scenes. They had a depressing effect upon all. It 
was in vain the soldiers called to mind their victory, if vic- 
tory it could be called. The officers felt that it had been 
purchased at too dear a price, and there was an air of de- 
jection in their looks. This dejection was also seen in the 
men. Bitter were the reflections that were cast on the 
policy that had cut down the flower of the troops. 

" Charlestown presented the melancholy evidence of the 
complicated horrors of the battle-field. A few persons 
were allowed to visit it from Boston. The smoke of its 
dwelling-places still rose on the air ; the dying and the dead 
still lay upon its hills. 

" Besides the militia which poured into the American 
camp, General Ward was reinforced by regularly enlisted 
troops. . . . The Massachusetts regiments were soon 
filled up and commissioned. . . . ' Our troops are in 
high spirits, ' one writes, ' and their resolution increases ; 
they long to speak with them [the British] again. ' ' This 
battle has been of infinite service to us,' another writes, it 
has 'made us more vigilant, watchful, and cautious.' 'I 
wish we could sell them another hill at the same price,' 
writes General Greene. ' The enterprising genius and in- 
trepidity of these people,' writes a Virginian, of the New 
Englanders, ' are amazing. They are intent on burning 
Boston, in order to oust the [British] regulars; and none 
are more eager for it than those who have escaped out and 
who have left their whole property in it. ' " 

The different positions occupied by the American troops 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 277 

after the battle were at once protected by defensive works. 
A series of alarms, skirmishes, and cannonades followed, 
which kept the forces of the two armies alert and active. 
When General Washington, on the third of July, took com- 
mand of the American army, "he found himself at the 
head of a body of armed men, rather than of regular ranks 
of soldiers, — of men grown rugged in the cause of labor, pa- 
triotic, true to the American cause, but with high notions 
of independence, and hence impatient of the necessary re- 
straints of a life of war. Discipline was lax, offences were 
frequent, there was no general organization, and worse than 
all, hardly powder enough in the camp for nine cartridges 
to a man. Washington felt the difficulty of maintaining 
with such material a line of posts so exposed against an 
army of well-disciplined and well-supplied veterans. He 
was obliged to keep every part of his extended works well 
guarded, while the enemy could concentrate his force on 
any one point, and without an hour's notice could make a 
formidable attack. It was under such circumstances that 
he was obliged to remodel his army, and summon order to 
arise out of confusion. 

" General Washington on the ninth of July called a coun- 
cil of war, consisting of the major-generals and brigadier- 
generals. They estimated the force of the British at eleven 
thousand five hundred, and that at least an army of twenty- 
two thousand was necessary to act successfully against it ; 
whereas there were only seventeen thousand enrolled, in- 
cluding the sick and the absent, and onl}" fourteen thou- 
sand five hundred fit for duty. 

" The army was arranged in three grand divisions, each 
consisting of two brigades, or twelve regiments, in which 
the troops from the same colony, as far as practicable, were 
brought together. 

" The right wing, stationed at Roxbur}' and its southern 
dependencies, under Major-General Ward, consisted of two 
brigades, as follows: 



2 78 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

I. — Brigadier-General Thomas. 

Regiments. Total. Regiments. Total. 

General Ward. . . .453 Mass. Colonel Cotton. . . . 500 Mass. 

Thomas.. 500 " " Davidson .. .493 " 

Colonel Fellows ..434 " " D. Brewer.. 3 74 

" Learned . .489 

2. — Brigadier-General Spencer. 

Regiments. Total. Regiments. Total. 

General Spencer, J Conn. Colonel Walker . .491 Mass. 

Colonel Parsons, ?- 2333 " " J. Read. . .495 

"Huntington,; " Independents. .. .239 " 

" The left wing was placed under the command of 
Major-General Lee, who had under him Brigadier-General 
Greene, stationed at Prospect Hill, and Brigadier-General 
John Sullivan at Winter Hill. These brigades were as fol- 
lows: 

I. — Brigadier-General Sullivan. 
Regiments. Total. Regiments. Total. 

Colonel Stark, "j N. Hamp. Colonel Nixon, 412 Mass. 

Poor, V1664 " " Mansfield. 470 " 

Reed,) " " Doolittle . .^^1, " 

2. — Brigadier-General Greene. 

Regiments. Total. Regiments. Total. 

Colonel Varnum \ R. Isl. Colonel Whitcomb . . 523 Mass. 
" Hitchcock I 1085 " " Gardner. .. .417 " 

" Church. . . ) " "J. Brewer. . .301 " 

Little 472 " 



"The centre, stationed at Cambridge, was commanded 
by Major-General Putnam. These brigades were as fol- 
lows : 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 279 

I. — Brigadier-General Heath. 

Regiments. Total. Reginicjits. Total. 

General Heath . . . .483 Mass. Colonel Phinney. ■ -319 Mass. 
Colonel Patterson, 409 " " Gerrish . ..498 

" Scamman, 456 " " Prescott . .430 

2. — Senior Officer. 
Regiments. Total. Regim,ents. Total. 

General Putnam . . Conn. Colonel Bridge. . . 470 Mass. 

Colonel Glover ... .454 Mass. " Woodbridge,366 
Frye 406 " " Sargent.... 

"Of these regiments, General Heath's was ordered to 
take post at No. 2, Colonel Patterson's at No. 3, Colonel 
Scamman 's at No. r and the redoubts between that and No. 
2, Colonel Prescott 's at Sewall's Point, and Colonel Ger- 
rish 's to furnish the companies for Chelsea, Maiden, and 
Medford. 

"The total of the above, as returned, without including 
Colonel Sargent's regiment, which had not been completed, 
was sixteen thousand seven hundred and se\Tnty. To 
this must be added the regiment of artillery, under Colonel 
Richard Gridley, of four hundred and eight}'-nine men; and 
Major Train's company of Rhode Island artillery, of ninety- 
six men." 

The features and regulations of the camp, as described 
by the Rev. William Emerson, were the following: 

" There is great overturning in the cain}), as to order and 
regularity. New lords, new laws. The generals, Wash- 
ington and Lee, are upon the lines every day. New orders 
from his excellenc\' are read to the respectix'e regiments 
every morning after ])rayers. The strictest go\'ernment is 
taking place, and great distinction is made between otlieers 
and soldiers. Every one is made to know liis place, and 
keep in it, or be tied U]) and n^reix-e tliirlx- or forty lashes, 
according to his crime. 



28o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" Thousands are at work every day from four to eleven 
o'clock in the morning. It is surprising how much work 
has been done. The lines are extended almost from Cam- 
bridge to Mystic River, so that very soon it will be morally 
impossible for the enemy to get between the works, except 
in one place, which is supposed to be left purposely unfor- 
tified to entice the enemy out of their fortresses. 

"It is very diverting to walk among the camps. They 
are as different in their form as the owners are in their dress ; 
and every tent is a portraiture of the temper and taste of 
the persons who encamp in it. Some are made of boards, 
and some of sail-cloth. Some partly of one and partly of 
the other. Again, others are made of stone and turf, brick 
or brush. Some are thrown up in a hurry, others curiously 
wrought with doors and windows, done with wreaths and 
withes, in the manner of a basket. Some are your proper 
tents and marquees, looking like the regular camp of the 
enemy. In these are the Rhode Islanders, who are fur- 
nished with tent-equipage, and everything in the most 
exact English style." 

" I have been much gratified this day, " remarks another 
observer, on the twentieth of July, " with a view of General 
Washington. His excellency was on horseback, in com- 
pany with several military gentlemen. It was not difficult 
to distinguish him from all others ; his personal appearance 
is truly noble and majestic, being tall and well-propor- 
tioned. His dress is a blue coat with buff-colored facings, 
a rich epaulette on each shoulder, buff underdress, and an 
elegant small sword; a black cockade in his hat." 

The siege of Boston was a task that greatly taxed the 
patience of the beleaguering army. " Washington was 
compelled by circumstances around him to pursue an in- 
active defensive policy. This together with the condition 
of his army, more especially as to enlistments, weighed 
heavily on his mind. The Connecticut and Rhode Island 
troops were engaged only until the first of December, 1775, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 281 

and those of Massachusetts only until the first of January, 
1776, and he was desirous, before that time, by ' som3 deci- 
sive stroke' to drive the enemy from Boston, and thus to 
relieve the country from the expense of an army." 

On the first day of the vear 1776, King George's speech 
at the opening of the British Parliament was brought to the 
American camp. "It declared that the 'rebellious war' 
was ' manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing 
an independent empire.' It announced that the spirit of 
the British nation was too high, and its resources were too 
numerous, to give up so many colonies, which it had planted 
with great industry, nursed with great tenderness, and pro- 
tected with ' much expense of blood and treasure. ' It had 
become the part of wisdom and clemency to put a speedy 
end to the disorders in America by the most decisive exer- 
tions. Hence the navy had been increased, the land forces 
had been augmented, and negotiations had been commenced 
for foreign aid." 

That da\" the American army beheld for the first time 
the hoisting of the Union flag of thirteen stripes in com- 
pliment to the thirteen united colonies. The army was 
then "weaker than at any other time during the siege." 
Thousands of the troops belonging to the old regiments 
were returning home. " A large number had brought into 
the field their own fire-arms." Owing to the scarcity of 
muskets and rifles, "they were ordered to be prized by in- 
spectors, paid for accordingl)', and retained for service. Some 
of the soldiers, dissatisfied with the value affixed to their 
property, regarded this measure as unjust and t>'rannical. " 

Washington, on the fourth of Januar>-, wrote; "Search 
the volumes of history through, and I mucli (|uesti()n 
whether a case similar to ours is to ])e found; nanieh', to 
maintain a ])ost against the flower of the Brilisli troops for 
six months together, without ])o\V(ler, and then to have one 
arm)' disbanded, and another to be raised, within tlie same 
distance of a reinforced army." 



282 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

This dismal condition of affairs, however, was soon to be 
changed to one of bright prospects. On Sunday morning, 
March 17, 1776, the troops which the British had at Bunker 
Hill were seen leaving it, and, with the other forces in and 
about Boston, embarked before noon on the men-of-war 
and transports at anchor in the harbor, which then weighed 
anchor, broke sail, and stood seaward. Finding that General 
Howe had evacuated the city, General Putnam, by the order 
of General Washington, in the name of the thirteen American 
colonies, took possession of all the forts, defences, and stores 
left by the enemy. 

"General Howe's effective force, including seamen, was 
about eleven thousand men. More than a thousand ref- 
ugees left Boston with the army, as follows: — members of 
the council, commissioners, custom-house officers, and other 
persons who had been in some official station, one hundred 
and two; clergy, eighteen; persons from the country, one 
hundred and five; merchants and other inhabitants of 
Boston, two hundred and thirteen; farmers, traders, and 
mechanics, three hundred and eighty- two ; total, nine hun- 
dred and twenty-four. All these returned their names on 
their arrival at Halifax. About two hundred others did not 
return their names." 

Of the two hundred and fifty cannon left by the British, 
about one half of them were in a serviceable condition. 
During the investment of Boston by the American forces 
"less than thirty lives had been lost." ' 

General Washington, assuming that the city of New 
York would be the next point of the operations of the 
enemy's main army, began sending there, on the eighteenth 

^ History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, 1858. Vol. 
vii., pp. 314, 317, 318, 320, 321, 362, 363. — History of the Siege of Boston, and of 
the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. By Richard Frothinghani. 
Fourth edition. Boston, 1873. Pp. 115, 116, 117, 118, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 

137. 138, 139. 141, 142, 143. 144, 145. 146, 147. 148, 149. 150. ^51. 152, 183, 192, 
193, 194, 207, 208, 209, 210, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 244, 283, 284, 285, 311. 
— Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Boston, 1899. 
Pp. 224, 226, 227, 229, 231. — Rolls of the Soldiers [of the State of New Hanip- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 283 

of March, 1776, a part of his forces, and the rest followed on 
the fourth of A]3ril, with the exception of five regiments 
which were left at Boston, under the command of General 
Ward, to garrison its defences. On the second of July, 
General Howe's army from Halifax, on one hundred and 
twenty- seven transports and men-of-war arrived in the 
roadstead at Sandy Hook, and on the fifth landed on Staten 
Island. Generals Clinton and Cornwallis with their com- 
mands reached there on the first of August. On the twenty- 
sixth of that nionth, the American troops in and around 
New York, including the sick and those without arms, num- 
bered twenty-seven thousand. The rank and file of the 
British army in the vicinit)'' of the city, as reported by Gen- 
eral Howe on the following day, aggregated twenty-six 
thousand two hundred and forty-seven men, exclusive of a 
battalion of Royalists. 

" Of the batteries by which New York was protected, 
the most important was the old Fort George on the south 
point of the island; a barrier crossed Broadway near the 
Bowling Green; a redoubt was planted near the river, west 
of Trinity Church; another, that took the name of Bunker 
Hill, near the site of the present [1866] Centre Market. 
Earthworks were thrown up here and there along the East 
and Hudson rivers within the settled parts of the town, and 
at the northern end of the island, on hills overlooking King's 
Bridge. 

" The American lines in Brooktyn, including angles, and 
four redoubts which mounted twenty large and small can- 
non, ran for a mile and a half from Wallabout Bay to the 
marsh of Gowanus Creek cove; the counterscarp and 
parapet were f raised with sharpened stakes. A fortress of 
seven guns crowned Brooklyn Heights. The entrance int(^ 

shire] in the Revolutionary War, 1775, to May, 1777. Vol. i. of War Rolls, vol. 
XV. of the series. Compiled and edited by Isaac W. Hammond. Concord, 
1885. Pp. 210, 214, 217, 219-221. — The Record of Connecticut Men in the 
Military and Naval Service during the War of the Revolution, 1775-^7^3- Edited 
by Henry P. Johnston. Hartford, 1S89. P. 47. 



284 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the East River was guarded by a battery of five guns at 
Red-Hoek." 

The twenty thousand and more British troops which 
came into conflict on Long Island, on th3 site of Prospect 
Park, in Brooklyn, with eight thousand American volun- 
teers and militia, on the twenty-seventh of August, 1777, 
and succeeded in making the latter retreat with a loss of 
less than a thousand officers and men, of whom three 
fourths were prisoners, sustained a loss of "five officers 
killed and twenty-one wounded and missing; fifty-eight 
non-commissioned officers and men killed, and three hun- 
dred and sixteen wounded and missing," 

On Sunday, the fifteenth of September, the advance 
troops of the British force entered the city of New York, 
which was at once occupied by Sir William Howe, and the 
British flag hoisted over the walls of old Fort George. 

" For nearly four weeks Washington and the main body 
of his army remained on the heights of Harlem. There 
existed no highway from the south, except the narrow one, " 
which, near the site of One Hundred and Forty-fourth 
Street, then wound up Breakneck Hill. "The approach 
from that quarter was guarded by three parallel lines, of 
which the first and weakest ran from about the site of One 
Hundred and Forty-eighth Street on the east to the site of 
One Hundred and Forty-fifth on the west; the second was 
in the rear, at the distance of two fifths of a mile ; the third, 
one quarter of a mile still farther to the north ; so that they 
could be protected, one from another, by musketry as well 
as cannon. A little farther than the third parallel, the 
house which Washington occupied stood on the high ground 
overlooking the plains, the hills above Macgowan's Pass, 
the distant city, and its islands." 

North of the headquarters of the commander-in-chief 
was seen the steep rise of ground known as Mount 
Washington, the summit of which was " crowned by a 
five-sided earthwork called Fort Washington, mounting 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 285 

thirty-four cannon, but without casemates, or strong 
outposts." 

Washington, seeing that Howe contemplated getting 
north of his position in order to secure the surrender of the 
American army on Manhattan Island, "began the evacua- 
tion of New York island by sending a brigade before 
nightfall, on the eleventh of October, four miles beyond 
King's Bridge, and detached a corps to White Plains, to 
which place he ordered his stores in Connecticut to be 
transferred." 

" In the march to White Plains, the Americans had the 
advantage of the shortest distance, the greatest number 
of efficient troops, and the strongest ground. ' ' 

On the twentieth of October, the British army moved 
northward and encamped at Scarsdale, its right wing being 
within four miles of White Plains. On the twenty-eighth 
the two armies confronted each other. In the action at 
White Plains on that day, the Americans sustained a loss 
" in killed and wounded that was less than one hundred 
while that of the English and Hessians was at least two 
hundred and twenty-nine." 

The British attacked Fort Washington on the sixteenth 
of November, and before nightfall compelled its outnum- 
bered defenders to capitulate. The royal army's loss was 
about five hundred in killed and wounded, and that of the 
American not more than one hundred and fifty. The sur- 
render of the fort gave to the British the valuable artillery 
used in its defence and about two thousand six hundred 
men that garrisoned it. 

Fort Lee was abandoned, where two officers, a quarter- 
master, three surgeons, and ninet}'-nine privates were taken 
prisoners by the British. 

Washington retreated into New Jerse\-, mox-ing south- 
ward from Newark to New Brunswick, thence to Princeton, 
and then to Trenton, where he arrived on the third of De- 
cember. Lord Cornwallis followed and reached Trenton 



286 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

just as the rear guard of the American army had crossed the 
Delaware River on the eighth of December. The surprise 
of the Hessians at Trenton, on the twenty-sixth, by Wash- 
ington, caused them a loss, in the short action of thirty-five 
minutes, of ninety-five killed and wounded, and of prisoners, 
nine hundred and forty- six, thirty of whom were officers. 
The American casualties were two killed and three wounded. 
Twelve hundred stand of small arms, six brass field-pieces, 
four sets of colors, twelve drums, many blankets, and garri- 
son stores were among the trophies gained by the notable 
strategy of Washington. 

" Until that hour, the life of the United States flickered 
like a dying flame," for up to that time the United States 
Congress had left on its journals the suggestion that a re- 
union with Great Britain might be possible. However, be- 
fore the victory at Trenton was known, it voted to " assure 
foreign courts that the Congress and people of America are 
determined to maintain their independence at all events." 

On the thirtieth of December, 1776, the term of the en- 
listment of the men of the New England regiments came to 
an end, but they were induced to remain in the field six 
weeks longer. The garrison at Ticonderoga, which in 
November consisted of about twenty-five hundred men, was 
also to be lessened, on the fifth of January, 1777, by the ex- 
piration of the time of many of the men there. 

During the campaign of 1776, fifteen members of the 
Edson familv and three of their African servants were in 
the field: Hosea, the fourth son of Doctor Elijah and Anne 
(Packard) Edson, on the first of February began serving as a 
bombardier in Ca])tain William Todd's company in Colonel 
Thomas Craft's artillery regiment, and continued in that 
position until the eighth of May, covering a period of three 
months and seven days. Daniel, the third son of Abel and 
Margaret (Conant) Edson, as a corporal in Captain Simeon 
Leach's company in Colonel Benjamin Gill's regiment, 
marched with the company on the fourth of March from 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 287 

Stoughton to fortify Dorchester Heights, which kept him in 
service five days. 

David, the fourth son of Joseph and Lydia (Gary) Edson, 
as a private in Gaptain Nathan Packard's company in 
Golonel Edward Mitchell's regiment, who marched, on the 
fourth of March, with the company on an alarm at Squan- 
tum, served five days; he, with his son David, was credited 
with ten days' service three. Barnabas, the third son of 
James and Esther (Allen) Edson, was also a private in the 
same company and fdso served with it on the same alarm; 
as also did Jacob, the eldest son of Benjamin and Ann 
(Thayer) Edson, as a drummer. 

Daniel, the third son of Joseph and Lydia (Gary) Edson, 
and Polycarpus, the fourth son of Abiezer and Mary (Pack- 
ard) Edson, as ]:)ri\'ates in Gaptain Abram Washburn's 
company, in Golonel Edward Mitchell's regiment, marched 
on the fourth of March, from Bridge water to Horse Neck in 
the town of Braintree, and served five days. John, the 
eldest son of Joseph and Abigail (Forrest) Edson, enlisted as 
a private in Gaptain Isaac Thayer's company, in Golonel 
Thomas Marshall's regiment, on the tenth of July, and 
served twenty-one days. 

Among the Massachusetts regiments in the field in and 
about the city of New York, in August, was the Plymouth 
and Barnstable regiment, commanded by Golonel Simeon 
Gary. In it was Gaptain James Allen's company, in which 
as privates were James, the sixth son of Josc])h and Lydia 
(Gary) Edson, who enlisted on the twenty-fifth of May, and 
served until the first of December, 1776; David, their 
fourth son, who served five months at New York, fifteen 
da>'s on the Bedford alarm, and tliroe months at North 
Kingston; Galvin, the second son of Dr. I^lijah and Anne 
(Packard) Edson; and jolm, the eldest son of John and 
Hannah (Allen) Edson; the four being in camp, near New 
York, on the ninth of August. 

In Gaptain John Gouch's compan_\-, in Golonel Philip 



288 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Burr Bradley's Connecticut regiment, was Terance Edson, 
who enlisted on the sixteenth of August, and served until 
he was discharged on the twenty-ninth of December. The 
regiment was stationed the greater part of the summer and 
early fall at Bergen Heights and Paulus Hoek. In October 
it moved up the Hudson River to the vicinity of Fort Lee. 
In November most of the regiment was sent across the 
river to assist in defending Fort Washington, which was 
taken by the British on the sixteenth of Novembre. He 
appears to have escaped capture, for his name is not on the 
list of prisoners. 

Polycarpus, the fourth son of Abiezer and Mary D. 
(Packard) Edson, enlisted on the twentieth of September, 
and served as a private fifty-nine and one half days, in Cap- 
tain Abram Washburn's company, in Colonel John Cush- 
ing's regiment; the company being stationed at Newport, 
R. I. 

Of those who marched to Rhode Island, on the alarm of 
the eighth of December, were : John, the eldest son of John 
and Hannah (Allen) Edson, a corporal in Captain Nathan 
Alden's company, commanded by Lieutenant John Whit- 
man, in Colonel Edward Mitchell's regiment, serving 
sixteen days in the field; Benjamin, their second son, a 
private, in Captain Josiah Packard's company, in the same 
regiment; Barnabas, the third son of James and Esther 
(Allen) Edson, a private in the same company ; and Ebenezer 
the eighth son of Benjamin and Joanna (Orcutt) Edson, also 
a private in the same company ; each of whom was in the 
field sixteen days. The last-named patriot is also credited 
with twenty- two days' service on the British alarm in 1776. 
Joseph, the eldest son of Jesse and Lydia Titus (Packard) 
Edson, a corporal in Captain Elisha Barney's company, in 
Colonel George Williams' third Bristol County regiment, 
which marched to Warren by the way of Rehoboth, on the 
alarm in Rhode Island, on the eighth of December, was in 
the field five days on that occasion. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 289 

James, the sixth son of J()se])h and L\'(lia (Cary) Edson, 
on his discharge on the first of December from service in 
Captain Josiah Smith's company, enhsted, on the twenty- 
fifth of that month, in Captain Daniel Cadwell's company, 
in Colonel Timothy Robinson's Hampshire County regi- 
ment, and served at Ticonderoga until discharged on the 
second of April, 1777. 

Gad Edson served also in the campaign of 1776, being 
a ])rivate in Captain Abiel Peirce's company, in Colonel 
Nicholas Dike's regiment. His service was credited to the 
town of Bridgewater, as was that of Radieba Edson, a 
privat3 in the same company/ 

' History of the U)iited States. By George Bancroft. Boston, iS6o. Vol. 
viii., pp. 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196; vol. ix., Boston, iS66, pp. 8i, 82, 85, 90, 
95' 157- 158. 165, 166, 175, 177, 180, 182, 193, 235, 237, 240. — Massachusetts 
Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Boston, 1899. Pp. 153, 225, 
226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 388. — The Record of Connecticut Men in the Military 
and Naval Service during the War of the Revolution, lyy ^-lyS;]. Edited by 
Henry P. Johnston. Hartford, 1889. P. 419. 

19 



Chapter X 
Edsons in the Revolutionary War 

1777-1783 

A^y'HATEVER may have been regarded by the British 
^ ' ministry as evidence of success in subduing the re- 
belHous people of the American colonies, there was certainly 
no satisfying proof at the beginning of the year 1777 of 
the actual re-establishment of the authority of the British 
Crown in any of the disaffected provinces. Nor were tehre 
any great spaces of territory within the bounds of the re- 
volting colonies occupied at that time by the troops of 
Great Britain. As pertinently said by Bancroft: "New 
England except Rhode Island, all central, northern, and 
western New York except Fort Niagara, all the country 
from the Delaware River to Florida, were then free from 
the invaders, who had acquired only the islands that 
touched New York harbor, and a few adjacent outposts, of 
which Brunswick [in New Jersey] and the hills round King's 
Bridge were the most remote." 

The troops under the immediate command of Wash- 
ington, in the spring of 1777, at Morristown, about eight 
thousand fit for duty, were organized in five divisions of two 
brigades each, and included forty-three regiments from New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. 
The New York and New England regiments were mainly at 
stations near Peekskill on the Hudson, and several at 
Ticonderoga. 

In his Military Journal, under the heading of "June, 

290 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 291 

1777," Doctor James Thacher writes: "Congress has ap- 
pointed Major-General Philip Schin'ler to command in the 
northern department, including Albany, Ticonderoga, Fort 
Stanvvix, and their dependencies, and Major-General Ar- 
thur St. Clair has the immediate command of the posts of 
Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. It is also under- 
stood that the British government has appointed Lieu- 
tenant-General John Burgoyne commander-in-chief of its 
army in Canada, consisting, it is said, of eight or ten thou- 
sand men. According to authentic reports, the plan of the 
British government for the present campaign is, that Gen- 
eral Burgoyne 's army shall take possession of Ticonderoga 
and force its wa}' through the country to Albany, and to 
facilitate this event. Colonel Barry St. Leger is to march 
with a party of British, Germans, Canadians, and Indians 
to the Mohawk River, and make a diversion in that quarter 
[on Fort Stanwix]. The royal army at New A'ork, under 
command of General Howe, is to pass up the Hudson River, 
and, calculating on success in all quarters, the three armies 
are to form a junction at Alban}'. There, probably, the 
three commanders are to congratulate one another on their 
might}- achievements, and the flattering prospect of crush- 
ing the rebellion. This being accomplished, the communi- 
cation between the Southern and Eastern States will be 
interrupted, and New England, as they suppose, may be- 
come an eas}- prey. Judging from the foregoing detail, a \'ery 
acti\'e campaign is to be expected, and events of the greatest 
magnitude are undoubtedh' to be unfolded. The utmost 
exertions are now making to strengthen our works at Ticon- 
deroga, and if possible, to render the post invulnerable. 
Mount Independence, directl\' opposite to Ticonderoga, is 
strongh' fortified and well supi)hed with artillery." 

Writing, on the second of July, at Ticonderoga, where 
he had charge of the garrison hospital, the observant diarist 
remarks: "The British army is now approaching; some of 
their savage allies have been seen in the vicinity of our out- 



292 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

works, which, with the blockhouse beyond the old French 
lines, have this day been abandoned. . . . There seems 
to be a diversity of opinion whether General Burgoyne in- 
tends to besiege our garrison, or to attempt to possess him- 
self of it by assault on our lines. ... At about twelve 
o'clock, in the night of the fifth instant, I was urgently 
called from sleep, and informed that our army was in mo- 
tion, and was instantly to abandon Ticonderoga and Mount 
Independence. It was enjoined on me immediately to col- 
lect the sick and wounded, and as much of the hospital 
stores as possible, and assist in embarking them on board 
the bateaux and boats at the shore. Having with all pos- 
sible dispatch completed our embarkation, at three o'clock 
in the morning of the sixth, we commenced our voyage up 
the South Bay to Skeensborough, about thirty miles. At 
three o'clock in the afternoon we reached our destined port 
at Skeensborough." 

There, two hours later, they were surprised by a number 
of British troops and savages, and forced to beat a retreat 
to Fort Ann, " a small picket fort of no importance. " Hav- 
ing had orders to set it on fire, the retreating party departed 
on the eighth for Fort Edward, on the banks of the Hudson 
River, thirty miles southward. 

" General St. Clair, with his main army from Ticonder- 
oga, took a circuitous route through the woods to Hubbard- 
town, and Charlestown, in the New Hampshire grants, and 
being pursued by a strong detachment from Burgoyne 's 
army, his rear guard" "was overtaken, and on the seventh 
instant a very close and severe engagement took place." 
" On the twelfth, General St. Clair arrived at Fort Edward 
with the remains of his army, greatly distressed and worn 
down by fatigue. General Schuyler is commander at this 
post ; he has a small army of Continentals and militia, and is 
making every possible exertion, by taking up bridges, throw- 
ing obstructions in the roads and passes, by fallen trees, etc.. 
to impede the march of Burgoyne 's army towards Albany." 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 293 

Under the date of the eighth of August, he writes: " We 
have just been apprized, by express from the Mohawk 
country, that Colonel St. Legcr, and vSir John Johnson, with 
a body of Britons, Canadians, Tories, and Indians, had in- 
vested Fort Schuyler [Fort Stanwix], one hundred and ten 
miles from xAlbany." Hearing that a large force of Amer- 
ican troops was on its way to relieve the small garrison 
there, the Indian allies deserted St. Leger, who, deeming 
himself too weak to encounter it, " decamped in the greatest 
hurry and confusion, leaving his tents with most of his ar- 
tillery and stores in the field." 

Under the date of the thirtieth of August, the well-in- 
formed surgeon again writes: "Our army under General 
vSchu3der, has left its unimportant station at Fort Edward, 
and having made a stand for a few days at Saratoga, fell 
back to Stillwater, twenty-five miles above Albany, where 
it has taken its station, and is daily receiving reinforcements 
of militia and some Continental troops." " Being informed 
that a large quantity of stores, corn, cattle, etc., were de- 
posited at Bennington, in the New Hampshire grants, Gen- 
eral Burgoyne planned an expedition for the purpose of 
possessing himself of this treasure. He dispatched Colonel 
Baum, a German officer, with a party of five hundred Hes- 
sians and Tories, and one hundred Indians, with two field- 
pieces. . . .It was a providential circumstance, that 
General Stark was at or near Bennington, with about eight 
hundred New England militia." On the sixteenth of 
August, General Stark, aided by Colonel Seth Warner's 
regiment, attacked the British force, and with such success 
that the German troops, although reinforced, were routed, 
and suffered a loss of nine hundred and tliirty-foiir in 
killed, wounded, and ])ris()ners; "one llionsand stand of 
arms, four brass field-pieces, two hundred and lifly dragoon 
swords, eight loads of baggage, and l\\\>nt\- horses." 

"Major-General Horatio Gates has succecMlcd General 
Schu3der as comm;inder-in-eliief of tlie northern (k^part- 



2 94 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

ment, and has passed through this city [Albany] on his way 
to Stihwater." 

On the sixth of October, he writes: " An express passed 
through this city, on his way to General Gates' headquar- 
ters, with the information, that a detachment of troops from 
New York, supposed to be about four thousand, under the 
command of Sir Henry Clinton and Major-General John 
Vaughan, have undertaken an expedition up the North 
River. Their object undoubtedly is, to possess themselves 
of Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton, in the Highlands, 
and to make a diversion in favor of Burgoyne. General 
Putnam was stationed at Peekskill with a small force, but, 
being totally unable to cope with the enemy, has retired to 
some distance." 

Under the date of the eighth of October, he observes: 
" The anticipated important intelligence has just reached us 
that a most severe engagement took place yesterday be- 
tween the two armies, at a place between Stillwater and 
Saratoga, called Bemis' Heights." 

On the fourteenth, he details the particulars of the Brit- 
ish movement up the Hudson River: " We have now a con- 
firmation of the intelligence that Sir Henry Clinton and 
General Vaughan have pushed up the North River, and 
made a successful attack on our forts at the Highlands. 
Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton are near each other, on 
the western bank of the Hudson. They have been con- 
sidered of great importance as defensive posts against the 
passage of the enemy up the river. In addition to these 
forts, a strong boom, and an iron chain of immense size, 
were stretched across the river, and a frigate and two galleys 
were stationed among them. By these means it was always 
supposed that the position was invulnerable, provided a 
proper number of troops were posted in the forts; but it 
unfortunately happened that most of the continental troops 
were necessarily called off to join General Gates' army. 
The enemy came up the river, landed, and appeared un- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 295 

expectedly, and demanded a surrender of the forts, which, 
being resoluteh^ refused, were taken by assault, though not 
without a firm and brave resistance. General Putnam, 
who commanded at Peekskill in the vicinity, ha\-ing a small 
force only to guard the deposit of stores, was obliged to re- 
tire, and the barracks, stores, and provisions, to a very 
considerable amount, fell into the hands of the enemy and 
were destroyed." 

"It is the prevalent opinion here [in Albany], that by 
taking advantage of wind and tide, it is in the power of Sir 
Henr\' Clinton to convey his forces to this city within the 
space of five or six hours, and, having arrived here, a march 
of about twenty miles will carry him without opposition to 
Stillwater, which would involve General Gates in inexpressi- 
ble embarrassment and difficulty, by placing him between 
two armies, and thereby extricating Burgoyne from his peril- 
ous situation. 

" We have the most flattering accounts from camp. 
Our army is now posted within musket-shot of the enemy 
at Saratoga [Schu}derville], and is forming a circle round 
them." 

Under the date of the fourteenth of October, Doctor 
Thacher tells of the arrival of a courier from the camp at 
Schuylerville, with the intelligence: "Burgoyne has this 
day made proposals to General Gates to enter into a treaty 
for the surrender of his army. He desires a cessation of 
arms till the preliminary terms can be settled, to which 
General Gates has assented." 

On the morning of the seventeenth of October the Amer- 
ican troops "marched into the lines of the British to the 
tune of Yankee Doodle, where the>' continued till the royal 
army had marched to the place" where their arms and ar- 
tillery were to be left, and there relinquished them. 

"The trophies which we have achie\'ed b\- this great 
event, are, officers and soldiers, five thousand seven hundred 
and ninety-one. It lias l)een estimated that Burgoyne 's 



296 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

army, at the commencement of the campaign, was full the 
thousand strong; the deficiency now must be accounted 
for by the killed, loss by sickness, prisoners, and deserters. 
The train of brass artillery and other ordnance is immensely 
valuabl, consisting of forty-two pieces of brass ordenance, 
besides seven thousand muskets, with six thousand dozen 
cartridges and an ample supply of shot, shells, etc. To 
these are added, clothing for seven thousand men, a large 
number of tents, and other military stores." 

This surprising result was attributed to the patriotism, 
courage, and hardihood of the American troops. " So 
many of the rank and file," as said by Bancroft, "were 
freeholders or freeholders' sons, that they gave a character 
to the whole army. The negroes, of whom there were 
many in every regiment, served in the same companies 
with them, shared their mess, and partook of their spirit. 
In the want of a commander of superior ability, next to the 
generous care of Washington in detaching for the support 
of that quarter troops destined against Howe, victory was 
due to the enthusiasm of the soldiers." 

The occupation of the island of Rhode Island by British 
forces, begun early in the month of December, 1776, made 
that State for nearly three years the scene of frequent en- 
gagements, surprisese, and alarms, where the enmy and the 
American troops. Continental as well as New England 
militia, sustained losses, at different times, of considerable 
magnitude, without any decisive results. The first disem- 
barkation of the enemy's troops, about three thousand in 
number, under Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Clinton, took 
place on the eighth of December, and on the following day 
Newport became one of the principal seats of the quarters 
of the British during the winter. The islands Conanicut 
and Rhode Island being in the possession of the enemy, 
the Rhode Island regiment commanded by Colonel John 
Cook took post at Tivertoen, and the troops under Brigadier- 
General William West at Bristol. " From Massachusetts, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 297 

the Bristol and Plymouth County brigades under General 
George Godfrey and General Joseph Gushing, with three 
regiments and a train of artiller}^ from Worcester and 
Boston, were dispatched b\' the legislature ; and from Con- 
necticut three regiments and five companies, with a small 
bod\' of cavalry, were sent by Governor Jonathan Trum- 
bull. These were quartered at all the defensible points on 
each side of the bay. The State and islands were two great 
and hostile camps." 

In March, 1777. a project to attack the British on the 
island bearing the name of Rhode Island was formed; " the 
militia was called out to serve till the twentieth, and volun- 
teers in the neighboring towns of Massachusetts were called 
upon, to meet at Tiverton, on the twelfth of the month. 
Large rewards were offered for prisoners taken from the 
enemy. But the States were deficient in the quotas as- 
signed to them," and "the attempt was, therefore, reluc- 
tantly deferred." 

The United States Congress in April "recommended to 
the State of Rhode Island to make another attempt to dis- 
lodge the enemy, but some months passed before the effort 
could be renewed." 

Major-General Richard Prescott, the British commander 
of the enemy's forces on Rhode Island, was, at the begin- 
ning of July, "([uartered with an aide-de-camj). at a house 
in Portsmouth, on the west road, about fi\'e miles from 
Newport. Lieutenant-Colonel William Barton, command- 
ing the First Rhode Island Regiment, was stationed at 
Tiverton. Selecting six trustv officers and thirtv-four men, 
the party rowed to Bristol, in five whale-boats, on the fourth 
of July, and thence, on the night of the sixth, to Warwick 
Neck, where a storm detained them for two days. On the 
third night afterward, thev again embarkerb With ex- 
acted silence the boats were ])ulle(1 iK^twcen I^nulneee and 
Patience Islands, and on landing on the I\)rlsni;)utli slK^re. 
about a milt> from tlieir (k^stination, the i)art\- mareluM] in 



298 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

five divisions to the house. The sentinel on guard was 
secured by stratagem, one division watched the road, while 
three others entered at the different doors. The general 
was taken in bed, his aide-de-camp leaped from a window 
but was captured, and the whole party with the prisoners 
silently returned to the boats. They passed the ships be- 
fore any alarm was given, and at daylight reached Warwick 
Neck. The whole affair occupied six and a half hours. 
General Prescott and his aide were carried in a coach to 
Providence, and four days later, for greater safety, were 
sent, on parole, to Connecticut to be placed in charge of 
Governor Trumbull. Congress voted a sword to Colonel 
Barton for this gallant act." 

In September another project was " planned to drive the 
enemy from Rhode Island. Massachusetts had resolved 
to send three thousand troops and artillery in addition 
to her two regiments then in Rhode Island." In Octo- 
ber, " the forces gathered for the attack on Rhode Island 
amounted to about nine thousand men. A large number of 
boats were collected at Tiverton under charge of Major 
Nathan Munro, but on the night of the sixteenth, fixed for 
the attack, some preparations remained incomplete. A 
storm delayed the attempt for three days, when it was re- 
newed, but the wind proving unfavorable and some of the 
boats being seen and fired upon by the enemy, the attempt 
was again postponed four days, and the place of attack was 
changed to a point farther north, above Fogland Ferry. 
Again the weather proved unfavorable. These delays dis- 
affected the troops, and many withdrew. Scarcely five 
thousand could be mustered on the last night assigned for 
the embarkation. A council of officers decided that it was 
inexpedient to make the attempt, and the expedition was 
abandoned. ' ' 

The British troops under Lieutenant-General Charles 
Cornwallis having occupied Philadelphia on the twenty- 
seventh of September, the United States Congress there- 



EDSONvS IN ENCxLAND AND AMERICA 299 

upon ordered Major-General Israel Putnam, who was 
inconsequently attempting to dislodge the British from 
their outposts on th? Hudson, near New York, to send fif- 
teen hundred Continental line troops to reinforce Washing- 
ton's army, and cautioning him so to use the militia under 
his command " that the ])Osts in the Highlands might be 
perfectly safe." 

Sir William Howe, assuming that the American troops 
encamped at White Marsh, about fourteen miles from 
Philadelphia, might be successfully attacked, moved there 
on the cold night of the fourth of December, with a force 
of fourteen thousand men. On the following day a sharp 
skirmish ensued between the two confronting forces. On 
the seventh, a body of British troops, led by Major-General 
Grey, became engaged at Edge Hill in a sharp action with 
Brigadier-General Daniel Morgan's corps, then recently ar- 
rived from the department of the North, and the Maryland 
militia, under Colonel Mordecai Gist, in which the enemy 
lost eighty-nine in killed and wounded, and the Americans 
twenty-seven. On the eighth. General Howe returned 
with his force to Philadelphia. 

On the nineteenth of December, Washington's army 
went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, on the Schuyl- 
kill River, twenty-one miles southwest of Philadelphia. 
" As the men moved towards the spot selected for their 
winter resting-place, they had not clothes to cover their 
nakedness, nor blankets to lie on, nor tents to sleep 
under. For the want of shoes their marches through frost 
and snow might be traced l)y the blood from their feet, 
and they were almost as often without pro\-isions as 
with them. Washington's unsleeping vigilance and thor- 
ough system for recei\'ing intelligence secured them against 
surprise; love of country and attachment to tlieir gen- 
eral sustained them under tlieir im])arallele(l hardships; 
with anv other leader tht> arni_\" would Iia\'e dissoh'ed and 
vanished." 



300 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

During the campaign of 1777, twenty members of the 
Edson Family were in the field. James, the sixth son of 
Joseph and Lydia (Gary) Edson, in Gaptain John Russell's 
company in Golonel Gamaliel Bradford's Fourteenth Massa- 
chusetts Gontinental Line Regiment, enlisted on the six- 
teenth of January, 1777, and served until the twenty-first of 
March. The company marched from Boston to Bennington. 
Nathan, the second son of Abijah and Susanna (Snow), and 
Joseph, enlisted on the twenty-fifth of January, for three 
years; Josiah, the fifth son of Timothy and Lydia (Joy) 
Edson, enlisted on the twenty-sixth of January, for three 
years; and Benjamin, the second son of Seth and Irene 
(Howard) Edson, enlisted on the twenty-first of April, for 
eight months. These four resided in the town of Stafford, 
Gonnecticut, and were in Gaptain Amos Walbridge's com- 
pany in the Second Gonnecticut Line Regiment. Assem- 
bled at Danbury in April, the company was first stationed 
at Peekskill, served during the summer and fall along the 
Hudson under Major-General Putnam; ordered on the four- 
teenth of November to join the army under Washington; on 
the eighth of December engaged in the action at White 
Marsh, Pennsylvania, and wintered at Valley Forge. Jo- 
seph Edson died on the second of October, 1777. Ben- 
jamin Edson received his discharge on the first of January, 
1778. Abijah, the eldest son of Abijah and Susanna (Snow) 
Edson, served from the fifth of March, 1777, to the fifteenth 
of April, in Gaptain Hugh Maxwell's company in Golonel 
John Bailey's Second Massachusetts Line Regiment. The 
company wintered at Valley Forge, where Abijah Edson 
was reported as having died on the fifteenth of April, 1778. 
Ebenezer, the second son of Ebenezer and Lucy (Packard) 
Edson, served in Gaptain Benjamin Frothingham's com- 
pany in Golonel John Grane's regiment of Gontinental artil- 
lery from the ninth of April, 1777, to the thirty-first of 
December, 1779. Ichabod, the seventh son of Benjamin 
and Joanna (Orcutt) Edson, is credited with service in the 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 301 

tenth company of a Plymouth County regiment, at Rox- 
l)ury, eight months; at New York, twelve months; and 
with Minute-men, one month, in April, 1777. Nathan, the 
eldest son of Nathan and Mary (Sprague) Edson, as a ser- 
geant in Captain Edward Cobb's company in Colonel 
Jonathan Titcomb's regiment, marched on the twenty-first 
of April, 1777, and served two months at Bristol, Rhode 
Island; also enlisted on the ninth of July, and served five 
months and twenty-two days, in Rhode Island, in Cax^tain 
Edward Cole's company in Colonel Thomas Robinson's regi- 
ment. Thomas, the eldest son of Obed and Martha (Thomas) 
Edson, served as a sergeant in Captain Israel Trow's 
company, in Colonel Josiah Whitney's Bristol County regi- 
ment in Rhode Island, from the fourteenth of May to the 
sixth of July. Jonas, the second son of Samuel and Martha 
(Perkins) Edson, served five days in Captain John Cole's com- 
pany in Colonel Samuel Ashley's New Hampshire regiment, 
•from the twenty-eighth of June to the third of July. Peter, 
the third son of Ebenezer and Lucy (Packard) Edson, enlisted 
on the sixth of July, in Captain Joseph Cole's company in 
Colonel Timothy Robinson's regiment, and served in Rhode 
Island, until the first of January, 1778. Jonathan, the second 
son of Jonathan and Mehetabel (Lilly) Edson, enlisted on the 
ninth of July, in Captain Seth Murray's company in Major 
Jonathan Clap's regiment, and served one month and ten 
days , the company being on the expedition to Fort Edward 
and Moses' Creek. Nathan, the eldest son of Ebenezer and 
Lucy (Packard) Edson, enlisted on the twenty-third of July 
and served four days on an alarm in Rhode Island, in Cap- 
tain John Crawford's company in Colonel James Converse's 
regiment. He enlisted on the seventh of September, in 
Captain John Crawford's company in Colonel Job Cushing's 
regiment, and served in it until the twenty-ninth of Novem- 
ber. Cushman, the eldest son of Abijah and Hannah (Rug- 
gles) Edson, enlisted on the twenty- seventh of July in Captain 
Edmund Hedges' company in Colonel Jol) Cushing's regi- 



o 



02 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



ment, and was in the field at the northward one month and 
seven days. He enlisted on the seventh of September, in 
Captain Ebenezer Newell's company in Colonel Danforth 
Keyes' regiment, for service in Rhode Island, in which he 
served until the fourth of January, 1778. Abiezer, the eldest 
son of Abiezer and Jael (Bennett) Edson, enlisted on the sev- 
enteenth of August, in Captain David Cowden's company, 
which marched with the Fourth Hampshire County regi- 
ment, commanded b}^ Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin Ruggles 
Woodbridge, on the alarm at Bennington, being in the field 
six days. John, the eldest son of John and Hannah (Allen) 
Edson, and Seth the second son of William and Martha 
(Howard) Edson, enlisted on the twenty-fifth of September 
in Captain Joseph Keith's company in Colonel Theophilus 
Cotton's Plymouth County regiment; as also Abiel, the 
eldest son of Abiezer and Mary (Packard) Edson, in 
Captain Job Peirce's company in the same regiment, 
and marched on a secret expedition to Rhode Island ; 
the two first-named serving thirty-five days, and the 
last, twenty-five. Caleb, the fifth son of Doctor Elijah 
and Anne (Packard) Edson, served from the twenty-eighth 
of September to the thirty-first of October, as a musician 
in Captain Thomas Newcomb's company in the same 
regiment, and marched on the same secret expedition to 
Rhode Island. 

Samuel, the eldest son of Samuel and Mary (Dean) Edson, 
having imprudently expressed his adverse convictions re- 
garding the action of those of his relations who had taken 
up arms in support of their political rights, and vindic- 
tively declared his opposition to the war, in the spring of 
1777, after having brought upon himself not only the con- 
demnation of most of his friends and acquaintances in the 
town of Bridgewater, but the disapprobation of his patri- 
otic kinsmen, was arrested and convicted of being hostile 
to the interests of his countrymen. He was then sixty- 
three years old. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 303 

" Massachusetts State, ") "To Simeon Leonard, 

Plymouth, ss. >- Constable of the Town of Bridge- 

Bridgewater. ; water. 

" Whereas Samuel Edson of Bridge water in the County 
of Plymouth," stands Convicted before a Court of Special 
Sessions of the Peace held at said Bridgewater on the 20th 
Day of June Instant of Being inimically disposed towards 
This, and the other United States of America; that his 
further Residence in this State is Dangerous to the Public 
Peace & Safety: You are Therefore Commanded in the 
Name of the Government and People of said State Forth- 
with to take the said Samuel Edson into your Custody and 
him Safely Convey to the Honorable Board of War of the 
State of Massachusetts Bay (now siting in the Town of 
Boston) to be by them Transported off the Continent of 
America. For the Doing of which this shall be your Suffi- 
cient Warrant. 

" Given under our Hands & Seal at Bridgewater this 
20th of June, 1777. 

,,^ T- ") Justices of the Peace of 

Daniel Johnson, -' . ,, ^ , ^. o 

u -n N TTT R r the County of Plym- 

Benj'^ Willis, JUN-^ { r^ ' 

J Quorum un ms. 

His brother John was likewise sentenced. He was then 
forty-eight years of age, and is described as " a man of more 
than ordinary talent, amiable in his disposition, of affable 
manners, and withal a pious and exem])lar_\' christian and 
attached to the Church of England. ' ' On reaching Boston, he 
and his brother Samuel " were placed on board of a guard- 
ship for safe-keeping." Confinement there seriously affected 
the health of John, as is disclosed by the following certificate : 

" These may Certify that I have examined into the State 
of Health of Mr. John Edson, and find him an unfit subject 
for Confinement on board the Guard Ship. 

"Thos. Bulfinch, M.D. 
"Boston, August 15, 1777." 



304 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

He was shortly thereafter "removed to the dweUing- 
house of a Mr. Pierpont, where he was kindly treated, being 
permitted to walk upon the roof of the house, and occasion- 
ally to visit the family. There, in the latter part of 1777, he 
took the smallpox, with which he died." 

On the seventh of November, 1777, Samuel Edson gave 
a bond, with Robert Pierpont, and Joseph Dobel, mariner, 
both of Boston, of one thousand pounds, to the Honorable 
Board of War of the State of Massachusetts Bay, to " keep 
within the limits of the said town of Bridgewater and not 
depart therefrom, and to be of a peaceable and good be- 
haviour towards the inhabitants of this and the other 
United States of America, pay charges and be forthcoming 
to the said Board of War in there months from the day of 
the date hereof or sooner if they shall require it, then the 
above obligations to be void and of none effect, but in default 
thereof to abide and remain in full force and virtue." 

Samuel Edson, it appears, faithfully conformed to these 
requirements, and continued residing with his family in the 
town of Bridgewater until his death, on the twenty-fifth of 
February, 1801.' 

On the sixth of February, 1778, the United States of 



^ History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, 1866. Vol. 
ix., pp. 254, 400, 421, 453, 454, 458, 459. — A M ilitary J onrnal daring the Ameri- 
can Revohitionary War. By James Thacher, M.D. Boston, 1823. Pp. 95, 
96, 98, 99, 100, loi, 102, 105, 108, 109, no, III, 112, 113, 120, 121, 125, 126, 
127, 128, 130, 131. — History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Planta- 
tions. By Samuel Greene Arnold. New York, i860. Vol. ii., pp. 388, 389, 
390, 398, 402, 403, 406, 407, 408. — Battles of the American Revolution. By 
Henry B. Carrington. New York, 1876. Pp. 384, 397. — Massachusetts Sol- 
diers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Boston, 1899. Pp. 153, 224, 225, 
226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231. — -The Record of Connecticut Men in the Military and 
Naval Service during the War of the Revolution. Edited by Henry P. Johnston. 
Hartford, 1889. Pp. 31, 47, 159, 161, 587, 639, 642. — Rolls of the Soldiers [pi 
the State of New Hampshire] in the Revohitionary War. Compiled and edited 
by Isaac W. Hammond. Concord, 1885. Vol. iii. of War Rolls; vol. xvi. of 
the series. P. 607. — Revolutionary Royalists, ly/ 5-1^84. Massachusetts Ar- 
chives, vol. i., pp. 131, 147, 201. — A Genealogical Account of the Edsons, Early 
Settled in Bridgewater, with Appendices. Lowell, 1S64. Pp. 29, 30. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 305 

America and Louis the Sixteenth, King of France, entered 
into a treaty of amity and commerce, by which " the abso- 
lute and unlimited independence of the L"^nited States ' ' was 
recognized as "the essential end" of the defensive sti]:)ula- 
tions of the alliance, " and the two parties mutualK' en- 
gaged not to lay down their arms until it should be assured 
by the treaties terminating the war. The United States 
guaranteed to France the possessions then held by France 
in America, as well as those which it might acquire by a 
future treaty of peace ; and in like manner the King of 
France guaranteed to the United States their present pos- 
sessions, and their acquisitions during the war from the 
dominions of Great Britain in North America." 

The only important northern seats of British occupa- 
tion at the end of June, 1 778, were those of the city of New 
York, Staten Island, and Newport. After the battle of 
Monmouth on the twent\'-eighth of the month. General 
Washington moved with his army to New Brunswick, from 
which place he circumspectly advanced northward to the 
Hudson, crossed it, and established his headquarters, on 
the twenty-second of July, at White Plains. 

Major-General John Sullivan, having been invested with 
the command of the American troops in Rhode Island by 
General Washington, reached Providence on the seven- 
teenth of April. On the arrival off Newport, on the twenty- 
ninth of July, of the French fleet, consisting of twelve 
ships-of-the-line and four frigates, commanded l)y Lieuten- 
ant-General Count Charles Hector D'Estaing, " the British 
garrison on Conanicut Island withdrew to Newjiort. and 
the enemy's ships sought refuge in the harbor." 

"Washington then directed Major-General vSulh"van to 
call in the New England militia for a combined movement 
against Newport and its defences, assigned Major-(jeneral 
Nathaniel Greene and the Marquis de La Fayette to com- 
mand divisions, and ordered the bri2:ades of Hrii^adier- 
Generals James Mitchell \^anunn and John (ilowr to join 



J 



06 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



La Fayette's division. The American force which assem- 
bled at Providence was about ten thousand men." The 
British garrison under Major-General Pigot comprised about 
six thousand troops. On the fifth of August, two French 
ships entered the Narragansett passage, and two frigates 
passed in through the eastern, or Seaconnet, channel. The 
British frigates, which had secured the garrison from at- 
tack up to that time, were destroyed to prevent their cap- 
ture." 

"Volunteers began to pour in from the neighboring 
States, and Major-General Sullivan proceeded to the camp 
at Tiverton on the seventh to take command. D'Estaing, 
with twelve ship s-of- the- line, under a heavy cannonade 
from the British batteries, entered the harbor of Newport 
on the eighth to co-operate with the American army. The 
British then destroyed their two remaining ships. The 
next morning Major-General Sullivan, with about ten 
thousand troops, began to cross from Tiverton to the north 
end of Rhode Island, and the French troops destined for his 
support were disembarked upon Conanicut Island. On the 
same evening. Lord Howe, with thirty-six sail, of which 
thirteen were ships-of-the-line and seven frigates, appeared 
off Point Judith. It had been agreed that D'Estaing should 
land four thousand men on the west side of Rhode Island to 
co-operate with General Sullivan, but this event deranged 
the whole plan. That night the French troops were em- 
barked and the next morning D'Estaing, eager for battle, 
])ut to sea. Sullivan took possession of the forts at the 
north part of the island, which were abandoned by the 
enemy." From the tenth to the thirtieth of August, by 
various misunderstandings, stormy weather, unsuccessful 
engagements, the different plans projected for the capture 
of the British fleet and troops proved abortive, and on the 
thirtieth the main part of the American forces were again 
inside the defensive works at Tiverton. 

Major-General Sullivan's army consisted on the second 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 307 

of September of twelve hundred Continental and two thou- 
sand State troops, besides some companies of militia whose 
terms of service were about to expire, while that of the 
enemy, just reinforced, numbered nearly eleven thousand. 
In this situation, General Sullivan solicited Governor Trum- 
1)iill of Connecticut for further aid, as an attack on Provi- 
dence was expected. But the enemy's force w^as about to 
be employed in another direction. A fleet of forty shi])s 
and transports sailed for New Bedford, in the town 
of Dartmouth, Massachusetts Bay, and, landing four 
thousand troops, burnt it, on the fifth of September, and 
a part of Fair Haven, opposite, and much shipping at the 
wharves. 

During the campaign of 1778, fourteen members of the 
Edson Family severally went into various fields of action 
against the enem}', wiiere they not infrequently met those 
of their kinsmen who had ]:)reviously enlisted for the war 
serving in Continental line regiments. On the first of 
Januar}', 1778, Peter, the third son of Ebenezer and Lucy 
(Packard) Edson, enlisted in Captain Joseph Cole's company 
in Colonel John Jacobs 's regiment, and served twelve months 
and two days in Rhode Island; Cushman, the eldest son of 
Abijah and Hannah (Ruggles) Edson, went into camp as a 
private in Captain Israel Hicks 's company in Colonel John 
Daggett's regiment on the second of January, and served 
in Rhode Island until he was discharged on the thirt\--hrst 
of March. On the second of Ju1\', he enlisted in Captain 
Nathan Leonard's com])any in Colonel Nathaniel Wade's 
regiment, and also served in Captain John Cutler's coni- 
pany in the same regiment until the first of January, i 779, 
in Rhode Island. Nathan, the eldest son of Nathan and 
Mary (Sprague) Edson, enlisted on the first of January, and 
as a sergeant in Captain Joseph Cole's company in Colonel 
John Jacobs's regiment served nine months and two days 
in Rhode Island. I^>benezer, the second son of Ebenezer 
and Lucy (l^iekard) I'^dson, joined, in I'ehrnarx', Ca])tain 



3o8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Isaiah Bussey's company in Colonel John Crane's Contin- 
ental artillery regiment, for three years' service. Abel, the 
eldest son of Abel and Margaret (Conant) Edson, drafted out 
of Colonel Edward Mitchell's Third Plymouth County Regi- 
ment, on the thirtieth of March, for eight months' service 
in the Continental army, was in the field until the first of 
December; as also was Samuel, the eldest son of Samuel 
and Martha (Perkins) Edson; and likewise Polycarpus, the 
fourth son of Abiezer and Mary (Packard) Edson. Caleb, the 
fifth son of Doctor Elijah and Anne (Packard) Edson, served 
from the twenty-sixth of June to the twentieth of July, in 
Captain John Ames's company in Colonel Nathaniel Wade's 
regiment, in Rhode Island, as also Seth, the second son of 
William and Martha (Howard) Edson. Jonathan, the second 
son of Jonathan and Mehetabel (Lilly) Edson, served nine 
months in Captain Joshua White's company in Colonel 
Israel Chapen's Hampshire County Regiment, from the 
twentieth of July, in the field at Fishkill. John, the eldest 
son of John and Hannah (Allen) Edson, enlisted on the 
twenty-fifth of July, and served in Rhode Island until the 
ninth of September, in Captain Nathan Packard's company 
in Colonel Thomas Carpenter's regiment. Daniel, the 
second son of Joseph and Abigail (Forrest) Edson, served 
from the thirtieth of July to the thirteenth of September, in 
Rhode Island, in Captain William Thurlo's company in 
Colonel Josiah Whitney's regiment. Abiel, the eldest son 
of Abiezer and Mary (Packard) Edson, enlisted on the sixth 
of September in Captain Joshua White's company in 
Colonel Ebenezer Sprout's regiment, at the alarm at New 
Bedford, in the town of Dartmouth, Massachusetts Bay, 
and marched to Rhode Island, and served six days.' 

^ History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, iS66. Vol. 
ix., pp. 481, 482. — History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Planta- 
tions. By Samuel Greene Arnold. New York, i860. Vol. ii., pp. 415, 421, 
422, 423, 424, 431. — Battles of the American Revolution. By Henry B. Carring- 
ton. New York, 1876. Pp. 448, 449, 450, 451. — Massachusetts Soldiers and 
Sailors of the Rcvolnlionary War. Boston, 1899. Pp. 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 
229, 230, 231. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 309 

As the principal operations of the British, in 1779, were 
in the vSouth, those conducted in the North, ])y the Amer- 
ican generals in command of the troops in New England 
and in the State of New York, were mostly defensive. The 
use of the irredeemable paper money was a sore affliction 
not only to the toiling people but likewise to the ])atrio tic of- 
ficers and men confronting the enemy. 

Washington, in one of his letters to a corresponding 
friend, frankly wrote, near the end of the month of March, 
saying: "I have seen without despondency, even for a 
moment, the hours which America has styled her gloomy 
ones ; but I have beheld no day, since the commencement of 
hostilities, that I have thought her liberties in such imminent 
danger as at present. 

Of the eighty battalions of infantry required by Con- 
gress, Pennsylvania was to furnish eleven and Massachu- 
setts fifteen. 

On the thirtieth of May, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry 
Clinton with a detachment of troops ascended the Hudson 
River, and obtained possession of the fortifications at Stony 
Point and Verplanck's Point. "The British fortified and 
garrisoned the two posts which commanded King's Ferry, 
and left the Americans no fine of communication l)etween 
New York and New Jersey, south of the Highlands." 

"A pillaging expedition, sent to punish the i^atriotism 
of Connecticut, was intrusted to Governor William Tryon. 
The fleet and transports arrived off New Haven, and at two 
in the morning of the fifth of Jul}', one part}' landed suddenly 
on the west of the town, another on the east. Everything 
was abandr)ned to plunder: vessels in llie harbor, ])ublic 
stores, and the warehouses near the vSound, were deslroxed 
bv fire. The soldiers, demoralized 1)\' license, lost all disci- 
])line, and the next morning retired before the Connecticut 
militia." "At East Ilax-cn, dwelling houses were lircMl, and 
cattle wantonh' killed; but the enemy's troo])S, were in like 
manner drix'tni to their shi])S. On tlu" afUM'noon ot the 



3IO EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

seventh, the expedition landed near Fairfield." "The 
Hessians were the first who were let loose to plunder, and 
every dwelling was given up to be stripped. Just before 
the sun went down, the firing of houses began, and was kept 
up through the night with little opposition, amidst the vain 
' cries of distressed women and helpless children. ' Early 
the next morning the conflagration was made general. 
When at the return of night the retreat was sounded, the 
rear-guard, composed of Germans, set in flames the meeting- 
house and every private habitation that till then had es- 
caped. At Green Farms, a meeting-house and all the 
dwellings and barns were consumed. 

" On the eleventh, the British appeared before Nor walk, 
and burned its houses, barns, and places of public worship. 
Sir George Collier and Tryon, the British admiral and gen- 
eral, in their address to the inhabitants of Connecticut, 
said: ' The existence of a single habitation on your defence- 
less coast ought to be a constant reproof to your ingrati- 
tude.' The British had already lost nearly a hundred and 
fifty men, but the survivors were gorged with plunder. The 
town of New London was selected as the next place of visita- 
tion, but Governor Tryon was recalled to the city of New 
York, on the taking of Stony Point, on the sixteenth, by 
Major-General Anthony Wayne. 

"The winter set in early and with unwonted severity. 
Before the middle of December, and long before log huts 
could be built [at Morristown], the snow lay two feet deep in 
New Jersey, where the troops were cantoned ; and they only 
saved themselves with difficulty from freezing by keeping 
u|) large fires. Continental money was valued at no more 
than thirty for one, and even at that rate the country people 
took it unwillingly. The credit of Congress being ex- 
hausted, there could be no regularity in supplies. Some- 
times the army was five or six days without bread; at other 
times as many without meat; and, once or twice, two or 
three days without either. It must have been disbanded, but 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 311 

that such was the honor of the magistrates of New Jersey, 
such the good disposition of its people, that the requisi- 
tions made by the commander-in-chief on its several coun- 
ties were punctually complied with, and in many counties 
exceeded. All accounts agree that, in the coldest winter of 
the century, the virtue of the army was put to the severest 
trial; and that the sufferings of its men for want of food, 
and of clothes and blankets, were borne with the most 
heroic patience." 

During the campaign of 1779, seven members of the 
Edson Family served in the field against the enemy, in addi- 
tion to those then belonging to regiments of the Continental 
line. Seth, the second son of William and Martha (Howard) 
Edson, enlisted on the third of February, 1779, in Captain 
Abner Crane's company, and served to the fourth of May, 
with guards at Boston. He was also of the number of men 
raised in 1 779 to serve in the Continental army, and entered, 
probably on the twenty-fifth of July, into that service, in 
Captain Luther Bailey's company in Colonel John Bailey's 
Second Massachusetts Line Regiment, and served until 
about the twenty-fifth of Ajjril, 1780. James, the sixth son 
of Joseph and Lydia (Cary) Edson, enlisted on the sixth of 
April, for Continental service, in Captain Charles Colton's 
company in Colonel John Greaton's Third Massachusetts 
Line Regiment, to serve till the first of Januar^^ 1780. 
Samuel, the eldest son of Samuel and Martha (Perkins) 
Edson, similarly served in the same company. Peter, the 
third son of Ebenezer and Lucy (Packard) Edson, enlisted 
on the eighth of July in Captain Jacoli Haskins's com])an\' 
in Colonel John Jacobs's regiment, willi which he ser\'ed 
until the thirty-first of January, 1780. Abiezer, the eldest 
son of Abiezer and Jael (Bennett) Edson, enlisted on the 
twentieth of July in Ca])tain Elijah Dwight's company in 
Colonel Elisha I\)rter's Ham])sln're Counlx' Rc\i^inu'nl, to 
serve at New London, and was discharged on the twenty- 
fifth of August. Jonathan, llie second .son of Jonatlian 



J 



12 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



and Mehetabel (Lilly) Edson, also enlisted then for the 
same purpose, in Captain Joseph Cook's company in the 
same regiment, and received his discharge after serving 
one month and thirteen days. Calvin, the second son of 
Doctor Elijah and Anne (Packard) Edson, entered into 
Continental service on the twenty-fifth of July, in Captain 
L. Bailey's company, in Colonel John Bailey's Second 
Massachusetts Continental Line Regiment, from which he 
was discharged on the twenty-fifth of April, 1780.' 

While the British forces in the Southern States were 
operating with considerable success during the campaign 
of 1780, those in the Northern were for the most part 
engaged in movements that gained them no important 
advantages. 

On the eighteenth of March, a new plan was adopted by 
the United States Congress to arrest the depreciation of its 
paper money, at that time sunk to forty for one of specie. 
The old bills were to be cancelled as fast as they were re- 
turned to the Treasury by a monthly State taxation of fifteen 
million dollars, and new bills issued to one twentieth of the 
amount; the "new bills to be based on the credit of the 
separate States in fair proportion, to draw interest at five 
per cent., and to be redeemed by the States in six years. 
One dollar of these new State bills was equal to forty of old 
Continental money, of which the amount then in circulation 
was two hunderd millions. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
and Delaware were the only States that met the heavy de- 
mand without delay. ' ' 

On the return of Count D'Estaing to France, he urged 
the French ministry to send twelve thousand men to the 
United States in order to prosecute the war more actively 
against the forces of Great Britain. In compliance with 
his suggestions, Lieutenant- General, the Count de Rocham-. 



^ History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, 1874. Vol. 
X., pp. 207, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 234, 235. — Massachusetts Soldiers and 
Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Boston, 1899. Pp. 224, 225, 228, 229, 230, 231. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 313 

beau was placed in command of the French force, and he, on 
the tenth of July, arrived at Newport with nearly six thou- 
sand men, constituting the first division of the corps of 
twelve thousand. Admiral de Tcrna\- liad command of 
the French fleet, which comprised nine ships and thirty- 
two transports. Sir Henry Clinton, having, on the thir- 
teenth, received an accession to the British fleet at anchor 
in the bay near the City of New York, embarked about 
eight thousand men for an attack upon the French and 
American forces in Rhode Island. " Supported by militia 
from Massachusetts and Connecticut, the French longed 
for the threatened attack, but the expedition proceeded 
no farther than Huntington Bay, on Long Island, where it 
idled away several days, and then returned to New York." 
The need of troops to keep the American forces in the 
field in New England and New York sufficient for defensive 
purposes during the year 1780 influenced thirteen members 
of the Edson Family to enter into Continental service or 
the service of the States in which thc>' were inhabitants, 
as also one of their African servants. On the nineteenth 
of February, 1780, Cushman, the eldest son of Abijah and 
Hannah (Ruggles) Edson, enlisted in Captain Ephraim 
Hartwell's company of guards which was stationed at 
Rutland, and served in it two months and four days 
until the twenty-third of i\pril. On the fifteenth of June, 
he was of the number of men enlisted to reinforce the 
Continental army, and served until the fifteenth of De- 
cember, as a sergeant, in Ca])tain William Treadwcll's 
company in Colonel John Crane's Continental artillery regi- 
ment. James, the sixth son of Joseph and Lydia (Cary) 
Edson, served from the fourteenth of April, as an artificer, at 
S])ringfield, to the end of the year, being then a member of 
Captain William Howe's com])any. Peter, the third son of 
Ebenezer and Lucy (Packard) Edson. entered, on the fonrth 
of Jiil\', the field for six months' service in the Continental 
armv, and marched that day for West Point. Aniasa, the 



314 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

third son of Jonathan and Mehetabel (Lilly) Edson, enlisted 
on the sixth of July for Continental service, from which he 
was discharged on the nineteenth of December. Josiah, 
the second son of James and Esther (Allen) Edson, enlisted 
on the thirtieth of July in Captain Nathan Packard's com- 
pany in Major Eliphalet Cary's regiment, which marched 
to Rhode Island on the alarm there, and served until the 
first of August. He is credited with twenty-one days' ser- 
vice at Providence, and five days on an alarm in Rhode 
Island. Barnabas, the third son of James and Esther 
(Allen) Edson (who, it is said, died in the army) , enlisted in 
the same company, on the thirtieth of July, and served to 
the ninth of August, on the Rhode Island alarm, as also did 
Ebenezer, the eighth son of Benjamin and Joanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, and Seth, the second son of William and Martha 
(Howard) Edson. Calvin, the second son of Doctor Elijah 
and Anne (Packard) Edson, enlisted on the thirtieth of July, 
and served to the ninth of August, in Captain James Allen's 
company in the same regiment; and Joel, the fifth son of 
Abiezer and Mary (Packard) Edson, in Captain Nathan 
Alden's company in the same regiment, and served from 
the thirtieth of July to the ninth of August, on the same 
alarm; Abiel, the eldest son of Abiezer and Mary (Packard) 
Edson, served from the first of August to the ninth in Cap- 
tain Joshua White's company in Colonel Ebenezer Sprout's 
regiment, and marched to Tiverton, on that alarm, as also 
did Teal Edson, in Lieutenant Samuel Dunbar's company 
in Major Eliphalet Cary's regiment. Abiel Edson also en- 
listed on the twenty-ninth of August, and served until the 
first of November, in Captain Edward Sparrow's company, 
in Colonel John Jacobs 's regiment, the company being de- 
tached to reinforce the Continental army. Nathan, the 
eldest son of Ebenezer and Lucy (Packard) Edson, served 
seven days, from the third of August to the ninth, in Cap- 
tain Nathan Packard's company in Major Eliphalet Cary's 
regiment, on the Rhode Island alarm, as did John, the eldest 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 315 

son of John and Hannah (Allen) Edson, in Captain Nathan 
Alden's company in the same regiment.' 

The military and naval operations of the contending 
armies in North America in 1781 l)rought the patriotic 
struggle of the thirteen States to its end. 

The active operations of the British and American forces 
terminating the war were mainly those causing the battles 
of Cowpens, Guilford, Hobkirk's Hill near Camden, and 
Eutaw Springs, in South Carolina; the siege of Yorktown, 
and the minor operations before Jamestown, Petersburg, 
and Richmond, in Virginia, and at New London, in Connecti- 
cut. The last member of the Edson Family called into 
service in the war was Caleb Edson, who served in the first 
Connecticut Continental Line Regiment, commanded l)y 
Colonel Durkee, joining it on the eighth of August, 1 781 , and 
being discharged on the fifteenth of December, that year. 

Of the members of the Edson Family who engaged 
themselves for service during the year 1781, the following 
seven, with an African servant, named Cagsar, are recorded 
as being in the field with those who had previously enlisted 
for the war in the Continental line regiments: Cushman, 
the eldest son of Abijah and Hannah (Ruggles) Edson, en- 
listed on the sixteenth of January in Captain John Allen's 
company in Colonel Jonathan Grout's regiment, to serve 
for three years in the Continental army, as also did Cyrus 
Edson, for the town of Barre, in Worcester Count\', Massa- 
chusstts, on the twenty-second of Februar}-. Abiel, the 
eldest son of Abiezer and Mary (Packard) Edson, enlisted 
on the tenth of March in Captain Abram Washburn's com- 
pany in Colonel Theophilus Cotton's regiment, and marched 
to Newport, Rhode Island, and served twenty- two days; 
as also Peter, the third son of Ebenezer and Luc\' (Packard) 

^ History oj the United States. By George Bancroft. Boston, 1S74. Vol. 
X., pp. 275, 276. — History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Planta- 
tions. By Samuel Greene Arnold. New York, i860. Vol. ii., pp. 453, 460, 
461, 462. — Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Boston, 
1899. Pp. 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 396. 



3i6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Edson. Nathan, their eldest son, served from April, 1781, 
to the thirtieth of June, 1783, first in Captain John Car- 
penter's company of guards at Springfield, twenty- two 
months, and in Captain Thomas Cushing's company, three 
months, at Castle Island. Ebenezer, their second son, en- 
listed on the third of September, 1781, and served as 
sergeant in Captain Luke Bicknell's company in Lieutenant- 
Colonel Enoch Putnam's regiment, at West Point, as also 
did Caesar, Edson 's servant. Seth, son of Seth and Irene 
(Howard) Edson, of vStafford, Connecticut, served in Cap- 
tain John Cook's company in Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel 
Canfield's Connecticut militia regiment, and was with the 
company at West Point, in September, 1781.' 

On the termination of hostilities in 1 781, the army under 
Washington went into winter quarters at the places near 
the city of New York, where they had cantoned the preced- 
ing year. During the year 1782 not a gun was fired between 
the two armies, and the prospect of peace was so promis- 
ing in September that Congress resolved to discharge the 
greater part of the forces in the field, and issued a proclama- 
tion for their disbandment, declaring this purpose by an- 
nouncing that the " part of the army, which stood engaged 
to serve during the war, and by several acts of Congress had 
been furloughed, should be absolutely discharged after the 
third of November from said service, and that the further 
service in the field of the officers deranged and on furlough 
are now dispensed with, and they have permission to retire 
from service, no more to be called to command." 

"The mode of disbanding the army was well calculated 
to prevent any disorders, which might have been the con- 
sequence of dismissing a large number of men in a body. 



* Battles of the American Revolution. By Henry B. Carrington. New- 
York, 1876. P. 536. — -Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary 
War. Boston, 1899. Pp. 153, 224, 225, 226, 227, 230. — -The Record of Con- 
necticut Men in the Military and Naval Service during the War of the Revolution. 
Edited by Henry P. Johnston. Hartford, 18S9. P. 581. — Collections of the 
Connecticut Historical Society. Hartford, 1901. Vol. viii., p. 93. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 317 

The advice of Washington and the resolves of Congress to 
pay and compensate them in such manner as the abih'ty of 
the United States would ])ermit, ()])erated to kec]) them 
quiet and ])revent tumult. Painful indeed was the ])arting 
scene, no description can be adequate to the tragic exhibi- 
tion. Both officers and soldiers, long unaccustomed to the 
affairs of private life, turned loose on the world to starve and 
become a prey to vulture speculators. Never can that 
melancholy day be forgotten when friends, companions for 
seven long 3^ears in joy and in sorrow, were torn asunder, 
without the hope of ever meeting again, and with prospects 
of a miserable subsistence in future." 

The conclusion which the British ministry reached had 
its consummation on the third of September, 1783, when 
the treaty of peace was signed at Paris, which established 
the independence of the United States of America. 

"On the twenty-fifth of November, 1783, the British 
army evacuated New A^ork, and the American troops, 
under General Knox, took possession of the city. Soon 
after General Washington and Governor George Clinton, 
with their suites, made their public entry into the cit>' on 
horseback, followed by the lieutenant-governor, and the 
members of the council for the temporary government of 
the southern district of the State, four abreast; General 
Knox and the officers of the army, eight abreast; the 
speaker of the assembly and citizens on foot, eight abreast. 
The governor gave a j)ublic dinner, at which the com- 
mander-in-chief and other general officers were present. 
Magnificent fireworks, infinitely exceeding everything of 
the kind before seen in the United vStates, were exhibited at 
the Bowhng Green, in Broadway, on the ewning of Tues- 
day, tile twenty-seventh, in c"elel)rati()n of the deliniti\'e 
treaty of peace. They commenced willi a do\e descending 
with an oli\-e l)raneh, and setting;- fire lo a niarron battery." ' 

' .4 Military Journal daring the American Revolutionary War. By James 
Thachcr, M.D. Boston, 1S23. Pp. 420, 421, 422. 



Chapter XI 
Obed Edson and his Son Thomas 

1 768-1836 

npHE desire of bettering their opportunities for the acquire- 
* ment of wealth not infrequently influenced some of 
the early inhabitants of New England to part with long- 
possessed property in one locality and seat themselves in 
another at no great distance from their former abodes. The 
discovery of tracts of land of greater fertility than those 
forming their own farms induced others to dispose of them 
and purchase more productive ones. Nearness to better 
markets also caused changes to be made to places close to 
rapidly growing centres of trade and industry. 

Obed, the fourth son of Sameul and Mary (Dean) Edson, 
who, as already mentioned, had served in the positions of 
corporal and sergeant in several expeditions against the 
French at Crown Point and in Nova Scotia, learning, about 
the beginning of the year 1768, five years after the French 
and Indian War, that an attractive and cultivated farm was 
purchasable in the town of Taunton in Bristol County, 
near the town of Norton, about eight miles southwest of 
the one owned by him in the town of Bridgewater, deter- 
mined to buy it and move there with his family; his last 
and tenth child and sixth son, Isaac, being then in his 
elevneth year, having been born on the second of February, 

1758. 

Obed Edson, by his first wife, Keturah, daughter of 
Jonathan and Abigail (Stoughton) Willis, had four sons and 

318 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMi:RlCA 319 

one daughter; and b)- his second wife, Martha (Thomas), 
three daughters and two sons. All of his children were 
born, as it seems, on the farm gi\'en him by his father on 
the twenty-first of January, 1744, " for and in consideration 
of the love, good- will, and natural affection" he bore him. 
The property, described by the instrument of conveyance, 
was " a certain piece of land in the southerly part of [the 
town of] Bridge water, " on which "the dwelling-house of 
the said Obed Edson" was then standing, "containing by 
estimation thirt}'-two acres, one quarter, and thirty-five 
rods, adjacent to the land at that time owned by William 
Snow. To this property Obed Edson, on the twenty-sixth 
of February, 1759, added thirty-six acres of land purchased 
of Ichabod Packard. On the twenty-seventh of April, 
1 761, Samuel Edson, his father, gave him "a certain piece 
of land in the southerly part of [the town of] Bridge water, " 
twenty-five acres in extent, adjoining " the southerly side 
of the land" on which he was living, and that belonging to 
Robert Gilmore. In his last will and testament, made on 
the twenty-third of August, 1770, his affectionate father 
bequeathed him one-sixth part of his cedar swamps. 

Perceiving, as has previously been observed, that he 
would be advantaged by possessing and occupying the farm 
in the town of Taunton, Obed Edson, on the thirteenth of 
February, 1768, conveyed to John Fobes of the town of 
Bridge water, for one hundred and fiftv- three pounds and 
seventeen shillings, his homestead in that town, being on 
the side of the road opposite the dwelling and farm where 
Alexander Ames lived. As described in the deed, the 
bounds of his farm began on the east side of the road in 
Captain Josiah Edson 's range, and then ran b\" many 
courses to the land had of his father Samuel, thence to 
Ichabod Packard's land, and thence b}' many courses to 
Captain Josiah Edson 's land, reser\'ing a countrv road 
across the same and also a dri\'owa\' to Ebonezer and 
Beriah Willis's farms. 



320 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

A month later, or on the twelfth of March, 1 768, Samuel 
Morey and his wife Mary, of Norton, county of Bristol, 
Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, yeoman, 
for and in consideration of one hundred and five pounds 
six shillings and eight pence, conveyed to Obed Edson of 
Bridge water, county of Plymouth, yeoman, a certain tract 
of land in the town of Taunton, county of Bristol, contain- 
ing by estimation forty acres, more or less, on the east and 
west sides of a road, at a corner of the same, going towards 
Samuel Blake's farm. 

While Obed Edson was engaged in tilling the land and 
harvesting the crops of his Taunton farm, the war of the 
Revolution began. His patriotic son Thomas, then twenty- 
two years of age, enlisted on the second of May in the fol- 
lowing year, at Taunton, in the company of which Silas 
Cobb of the neighboring town of Norton was captain; 
Isaac Smith, lieutenant; and Isaac Fisher, ensign. The 
company formed a part of Colonel Timothy Walker's regi- 
ment, which was stationed at Roxbury, prior to the battle 
of Bunker Hill on the seventeenth of June, 1776, and was 
engaged in the valorous action of that memorable day. 
Thomas Edson afterward participated, until the ninth of 
August, with the company, in the initial part of the siege 
of Boston. On the fourteenth of May, 1777, he enlisted in 
the town of Norton, in Captain Israel Trow's company, of 
which Isaac White and Jonathan Pratt were lieutenants, 
John White, Jacob Newland, Amos Martin, and he, ser- 
geants. The field of his service of fifty-four days was in 
Rhode Island, of which the particulars have been given on 
preceding pages. 

Obed Edson, as owner of the Taunton farm, held lawful 
possession of it until the seventeenth of June, 1776, in the 
sixteenth year of the reign of George the Third, when he 
conveyed it to John Crane of Norton, gentleman, for one 
hundred and nine pounds and nine shillings. The prop- 
erty, as described in the deed, embraced " a certain tract or 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 321 

tracts of land lying in said [town of] Tatmton, it being 
m}' homestead farm, containing by estimation thirty-four 
acres and one hundred and twenty rods of land, lying in 
two pieces." The first parcel, embracing thirty-one acres 
and one hundred and forty-three rods, " with ye dwelling 
house standing thereon," lay on the east side of the road, 
adjoining a corner of land belonging to the heirs of William 
Thayer, at another point the land of David Long, at an- 
other that of Daniel Lincoln. The second piece of two 
acres and one hundred and thirty-seven rods lay on the 
west side of the road. The conveyance was signed by 
Obed and Martha Edson, in the presence of their two sons 
Lewis and Thomas, and two other witnesses. It was 
acknowledged by Obed Edson at Taunton, Bristol County, 
on the ninth of November, that year, but was not recorded 
until the twenty- third of September, 1785. 

Silence, the third daughter of Obed and Martha (Thomas) 
Edson, was married, in Taunton, on the eighteenth of 
October, 1782, to James Trupwell. More particulars re- 
lating to Obed Edson 's family, while living in the town of 
Taunton, might have been presented here had not the 
early records of the town been partly destroyed by a fire. 

Whether Obed Edson, after selling his Taunton farm in 
1776, held it subsequently as a lessee, or moved imme- 
diately to another locality, cannot be determined. Inas- 
much as it is known that his wife, Martha, died on the 
sixth of December, 1795, in the town of Richfield, Otsego 
County, New York, and he also there, on the eighth of 
September, 1804, in the eighty- third year of his age, possibly 
he may have been one of the pioneer settlers of that part of 
Otsego County.' 

' Book of Deeds, No. 39, p. 72; No. 46, p. 240; No. 54, pp. 54, 55, oHice of 
Registry, Plymouth, Massachusetts; No. 51, pp. 142, 143; No. 64, pp. 298. 
299, office of Registry, Taunton, Massachusetts. — . I History of the Tozcit of 
Norton, Bristol County, Massachusetts. By George Faber Clark. Boston, 1S59. 
Pp. 396, 402, 403. — Massachusetts Soldiers and Saih'rs of the Revolutiotiary War. 
A compilation from the Archives ])repared and puMislied l)y tlic Secretary of 
the Commonwcaltli. Boston, iSyi). P. 231. 



322 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Berkshire County, bordering westerly on Rensselaer 
and Columbia counties, New York, was made a separate 
and distinct division of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 
in May, 1761. There were then four incorporated towns 
and six plantations in it. Of the last-named, one was New 
Framingham, now Lanesborough, in the northwestern ]3art 
of the county. Settlers began seating themselves within 
its limits about the year 1755, who gave the tract of land 
the name of Richfield. The town of Lanesborough was in- 
corporated on June 20, 1765, when its territory included a 
large part of that of the present town of Cheshire. 

At that time the inhabitants of the town of Lanes- 
borough were contemplating the building of a meeting- 
house. As the majority of them were Congregationalists, 
and would desire to have the services conducted after the 
custom of that denomination, the adherents of the Church 
of England were unwilling to be taxed for the erection of 
the edifice and the support of a minister of a different creed, 
William Bradley, Joel Sherman, Asa Barnes, Asahel Beach, 
Reuben Garlich, Abraham Bristol, William Jar vis, and 
others, who thought that the Church of England was more 
closely modelled after the apostolic one, began assembling 
and holding religious services at the house of William 
Bradley, who on such occasions read the prescribed prayers 
and lessons and a selected sermon. A schoolhouse having 
been built on the northeast corner of his farm, they after- 
ward used it as a place of worship, until about the year 1 769, 
when they began worshipping statedly in their first church, 
erected on a plot of ground lying a little south of the present 
rectory. 

The Rev. wSamuel Andrews, of Wallingford, Connecticut, 
in the fall of 1767, when journeying "to the northward," 
tarried several days in the town of Lanesborough. On 
October 2d, he presided at a meeting held at the house of 
William Bradley, where, on that day, was organized "the 
Church of England," of which William Bradley and Joel 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 323 

Sherman were elected wardens, and Aljraham Bristol, clerk. 
The zealous clergyman speedily commended the infant 
church to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts, which in 1770 made Lanesborough "one of 
the four stations of a new mission, with its centre at Great 
Barrington, under the pastoral care of the Rev. Gideon 
Bostwick," who, having been "ordained a priest in Lon- 
don, on the eleventh of March, 1770," acti\'cly began his 
missionary work at Lanesborough on the twenty-sixth of 
June, that year, when he presided at a meeting held there 
for the election of church officers. His extensive circuit 
allowed him to give but one Sunday in each month to 
Lanesborough. In the following September, he reported 
thirty families as having connection with the Lanesborough 
Church. 

Obed, the third son of Olied and Keturah (Willis) Edson, 
on attaining his majority, married, on April 22, 1769, Pini- 
dence, daughter of Wyllys Howe. They, as it seems, first 
resided at Ashfield, in Franklin County, Province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, where their first two children were born. 
Prudence and Obed; the daughter on March 4. 1771, and 
the son on May 16, 1772. Thence they moved to Lanes- 
borough, where the two children were baptized, by the Rev. 
Gideon Bostwick, on April 4, 1773. Obed Edson's culti- 
vated voice and knowledge of music led there to his elec- 
tion, on the tenth of the following month, to the ])Osition of 
chorister in the Church of England in Lanesborough, 
Joseph Hall having, on the same day, been chosen an asso- 
ciate chorister. The excellent vocalization of Obed Edson 
(2d) as a church chorister caused his re-election as such in 
the three succeeding years. 

Lewis, the fourth son of Obed and Keturali (Willis) Ed- 
son, at the age of twenty-two years married, in ihc town (^f 
Bridgewater, on January 30, 1770, He])zil)ali. danglUer ot 
Jonathan and Thankful (Newton) Waslibnrn. Thex' resided 
on the Taunton Road, o]i])osite the dwelling of Deacon 




riiimaiiitiiiii 



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maam 



324 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 325 

Fobes, about one and a half miles from William Latham's 
house. On June 14, 1776, he sold to Ezra Fobes his home- 
stead of twenty-five aeres one quarter and t\vent\'-one rods, 
together with the dwelling:. His mother-in-law was a wit- 
ness to the deed made b\- him of that date, she having re- 
linqtiished her right of dower in the homestead sold by 
Lewis in 1772. He moved to Lanesborough, probably in 
1778, where, on May 17, 1779, he was elected a chorister of 
the Church of England, as also he was in the three following 
years. Within that space of time he composed the hymn 
tunes long and still ]}Opular in this and other countries, 
bearing the town titles of " Bridge wa ter, " " Lenox, " " Green- 
field," and "Suffield," first published, in 1782, in the rare 
work: The Chorister's Companion, or Church Mujic Revijed. 
Containing, — Bcjides the Necessary Rules of Pjabnody; A 
Variety of Plain and Fnging Pfalm Ttmes: Together zvith A 
Collection of approved Hymns and Anthems. Many of 
ivhicJi, never before printed. Amos Doolittle, Sculpt., i'/82. 
New Haven. Printed for and Sold by Simeon Jocelin and 
Amos Doolittle. 

The preface, by "The Editors," is dated "New Haven, 
December 16, 1782." The four tunes, adapted to the words 
of the Thirty-ninth, Forty-sixth, Fifty-ninth, and Ninety- 
fifth Psalms, as arranged by Doctor Isaac Watts, Brady, and 
Tate, are in common, particular, and long metre, or measure, 
and are to be found in The Chorister's Companion under the 
abbreviated headlines and on the pages here given: "Suf- 
field. Pf. 39* Dr. W. C. M. 3s.; "58* Greenfield. Pf. 46'?^ 
B. andT. P. M."; "* Lenox. Pf. 148'J^ Dr. W. P. M. s. 59"; 
and "62 * Bridgewater. Pf. 95^^ B. & T. L. M." 

As entered in records of the Lanesborough Church oi 
England, Obed Edson (2d) was elected warden, on April 
30, 1 781, as he was in 1782, 1783, and 1786. 

Thomas, the first son of Obed and Martha (Thomas) Ed- 
son, was no doubt influenced to beconie (m inhabitant of 
the town of Lanesborou2:h b\' his two hah'd^rothers, Obed 



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EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMP:RICA 327 

and Lewis. He probably moved from the town of Taunton, 
Bristol County, Mass., shortly after serving in the summer 
of 1777, in Rhode Island, in an expedition against the Brit- 
ish then occupying the islands between the channels form- 
ing Narragansett Bay, as already narrated. 

Among the early settlers of the town of Lanesborough 
was William Jarvis, son of Thomas and Abigail (Smith) Jar- 
vis, born on March 29, 1727, who, as mentioned, was one of 
the original members of the local Church of England. He 
had served as an officer in the French and Indian War. He 
was united in marriage with Mary Wright, in 1751. who 
bore him eleven children, six sons and five daughters. He 
died, at Brainerd's Bridge, Albany County, Province of New 
York, on June 15, 1772, in the forty-sixth year of his age, 
survived by his wife, four sons, and four daughters. 

Shortly after arriving in the town of Lanesborough, 
Thomas Edson made the acquaintance of Mary, the second 
daughter of William and Mary (Wright) Jarvis, born there on 
May 12, 1762, and they were married June 17, 1780. The 
fruit of their marriage was nine children, four daughters and 
five sons, seven of whom were born in the town of Lanes- 
borough. 

The congregation of the Church of England in Lanes- 
borough built a second house of worship, in 1785, which is 
described as one " of wood, fifty-five feet by thirty, standing 
sideways to the street, with galleries on three sides, and a 
tall spire at the south end. The communion table, since 
used for a bier, was an ordinary dressing-table; the com- 
munion vessels were of pewter. The ])ews were partly 
sc[uare and partly oblong. Above and l)elo\v tliree htm- 
dred persons could sit comfortably. 

The successor of the Rev. Gideon Bostwick was the Rey. 
Daniel Burhans, the second son of Henr\- and Zeriah (Hall) 
Burhans, born at Sherman, Conn., on Jul\- 7. 1762. He 
early evinced a desire for study and began i)re])aring for 
entering college under a teacher who olTcred to I'urnisli him 




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EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 329 

the means of support while there. " In the fall of 1782 he 
visited his patron that he might be examined. He found 
the one on whom the hopes of a liberal education depended 
u])on his death-bed." i\bout that time his father moved 
with the famih' to the town of Lanesborough, where 
Daniel "worked for his board with the ])riviloge of at- 
tending school." The teacher was discharged and Mr. Bur- 
hans urged to take his place, which he did. He had been 
"educated in the creed of Calvinistic Congregationalism," 
l)ut changed his belief after receiving religious instruction 
from the Rev. Gideon Bostwick whom he had sought to 
obtain the same. On Whit-Sunday, 1783, he became a 
communicant. " He does not seem to have remained con- 
tinuously in Lanesborough, as he mentions living with a 
friend and teaching his children for his board and lodging, 
and afterward teaching a district school for five months." 

Of his residence in Lanesborough, he furnishes the fol- 
lowing account: "'My health having much improved, I 
finally concluded to seek contentment and support by 
teaching school in which I had been for some time past re- 
markalily successful in Lenox, the county town, where they 
were anxious I should [remain]. My friends in Lanes- 
borough in a few months erected a handsome brick build- 
ing, which I opened as an independent school. In a few 
months, the number of scholars exceeded one hundred, and 
in less than a year amounted to one hundred and fift}^ 
as many as could be accommodated, which remained un- 
diminished for six years. 

"'[r)n] October 12, 1788, I was married to Prudence 
Edson, in Saint Luke's church, by the Rev. (n'deon Bost- 
wick.' 

" Mr. Burhans was a successful teacher, and the school 
gave him an income of two hnndrcd dollars a vi'ar besides a 
comfortable support. Mrs. Bnrhans was an indcfatigal^le 
hel])meet in spite of the asthma with wln\di she had betMi 
afflicted from her childhood. 



330 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

'"About the year 1791, (having, as has been remarked 
read, in the absence of the Rev. Gideon Bostwick, on 
Sundays, the church service and a selected sermon,) I 
found, as it was suggested by some, that I had better close 
my school and take holy orders. . . . ' In the course of 
a few weeks, [while] in conversation with the Rev. Mr. 
Bostwick, he said to me : ' I have been thinking for some 
time of introducing another clergyman into the county, 
proposing that you should take deacon's orders, and re- 
tire an old man from traveling twenty-five miles to baptize 
a sick child, or to perform any office belonging to that de- 
gree in the ininistry. I finally consented.' " 

Meanwhile " Mr. Burhans was busily preparing himself 
for ordination. Besides his lay-reading in Lanesborough, 
he officiated during 1792, at New Lebanon Springs, then a 
place of great resort, where there were a few families be- 
longing to the [Episcopal] Church. The services were very 
largely attended, and an effort being made to build an 
Episcopal church at the Springs, the members of the Con- 
gregational Church, then vacant, became alarmed and 
asked Mr. Burhans to officiate in their meeting-house on 
Sunday afternoons, which he did several times. The result 
was that the Congregational society formally called him to 
be their minister, ' on condition, ' as he says, ' that I should 
pray without book one-half of the day.' " 

Concerning his ordination, he writes: " In the spring of 
1793, I closed my theological studies which had been only 
for a year. 

" On the first of June, I accompanied the Rev. Mr. 
Bostwick to Middle town, Connecticut, to attend the annual 
convention of that diocese, who introduced me as a candi- 
date for holy orders. The next morning, I was examined 
in the presence of the bishop by the late venerable Richard 
Mansfield, D.D., the Rev. Dr. Hubbard, and the Rev. Mr. 
Fogg. I received the order of deacon, on June 5, 1793, in 
the thirtieth year of my age." 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AxAIERICA 331 

Shortly after his return to Lanesborough he recieved the 
sad news of the death of the Rev. Gideon Bostwick, at New 
Milford, Connecticut, on June 13, 1793, in the fifty-first year 
of his age. He became thereu])on tlie minister of Saint 
Luke's church, Lanesborough, and continued his services at 
New Lebanon Springs, twelve miles distant, throughout the 
summer and fall. . . . '" On the first of November,' as 
he writes, 'I, with deep regret, closed my school much against 
the ardent wishes and desires of pupils and patrons. . . 
At this period I ceased to preach at New Lebanon, and 
organized a parish at Lenox, the county town, of ten 
families, and officiated one-half of my time.' 

In 1794, the Rev. Daniel Burhans was ordained a priest 
by the Right Rev. Samuel Seabury, bishop of Connecticut. 
"In the spring of 1799, Mr. Burhans, was induced to 
listen favorably to the proposals of the vestry of Trinity 
Church, Newtown, Connecticut, to become its rector. He 
moved thither in October, and served that church as pastor 
for thirty years. On May 5, 1803, he was bereft of his ami- 
able and esteemed wife by death." ' 

Doctor William ("Bill") Jarvis, the second eldest 
brother of Mary, the wife of Thomas Edson, through the 
inducements proffered him l)y William Cooper, the father 
of James Fenimore, abandoned his practice of medicine, 
surgery, and land-surveying in the town of Lanesborough, 
and settled, in 1787, on Fly Creek, a triljutary of Oak 
Creek, in the town of Otsego, Otsego County, about four 
miles northwest of Cooperstown. Married, on August 30, 
1 780, to Mary, daughter of James White, he was, at the time 
of his settlement, the father of two children, a son and a 
daughter. His brother, Asahel, four years his junior, then 
unmarried, accomjianied the family. A son was born to 



^ Tlie Protestant Episcopal Church in Bcrksliire. By Rev. Joseph Hooper, 
Lebanon Springs, New York. Book oj Berkshire. Papers by its Historical 
and Scientitic Society. Pulilished by the Society, Pittsheld, Mass., 18S9. Pp 
192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197-200, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 211. 



332 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Doctor William and Mary (White) Jarvis, on August 25, 
1 787, who, having been christened William Cooper, in honor 
of the patentee, was given by the pleased godfather fifty 
acres of land as a token of remembrance. 

The village of Lanesborough, lying five miles north of 
Pittsfield, commands a wide view of many lowland and 
upland farms and the westward heights of the Taconic 
Mountains. A mile or more south of its long stretch of 
attractive dwellings, standing in flower-planted yards, is a 
considerable expanse of water known as Pontoosic Lake, 
from which the Housatonic River flows southward into 
Connecticut. 

The seat of the home of Thomas and Mary (Jarvis) Ed- 
son was evidently not far from that of Obed and Prudence 
(Howe) Edson, probably two or three miles distant from 
Saint Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church, for, on June 15, 
1782, Thomas Edson sold to Simeon Chittenden, for eighty 
pounds, six acres of land, in the town of Lanesborough, off 
the south side of the first division lot, number 53, five rods 
wide at its eastern end and extending through the whole 
length of lot eight ; and, on the same day, vSimeon Chitten- 
den sold to Obed Edson, Junior, for the same sum, one third 
of division lot, number 10, and the wantage land arising on 
the finst division of lot 52. On November 11, 1785, Jason 
Newton conveyed to Obed Edson, Junior, for one hundred 
and sixty-eight pounds, thirty-two acres and the buildings 
standing on the land, off the first division lot number 
92, bounded on the south partly by land owned by William 
Noble and partly by land owned by Thomas Edson, and 
on the west and north by land belonging to Obed Edson, 
Jtmior.' 

In the list of baptisms contained in the partly extant 
records of Saint Luke's (Church of England) Protestant 
Episcopal Church of the town of Lanesborough, the last 

^ Book of Deeds, No. IS, pp. Syo, :^yi; No. 17, p. 599; No. 19. pp. 563,564, 
in the Registry office of Berkshire County, in Pittsfield, Mass. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND A.Mb:RICA ^ss 

entry to be found of the christening of the children of 
Thomas and Mary (Jar\-is) Edson, is that of their daughter 
Sally, on February 8, 1795. 

Doctor William Jarvis and his brother Asahel, finding 
that there were more means of furthering a settler's 
prosperity in Otsego County, N. Y., than in Berkshire 
County, Mass., began urging in 1796 their brother-in-law, 
Thomas Edson, to move thither with his family, whose 
nephews, Obed, the son of Obed and Prudence (Howe) Ed- 
son, and Lewis, the son of Lewis and Hepzibah (Washburn) 
Edson, had then recentl}^ seated themselves in that inviting 
region of fertile valleys and arable hills. The persuasive 
logic of their enthusiastic descriptions of the natural rich- 
ness of the soil and the generous inducements extended by 
Judge Cooper to worthy and intelligent settlers contained 
in the communications sent them, finalh' led Thomas and 
Mary (Jarvis) Edson to part with their property in Berkshire 
County, and with Obed and Prudence (Howe) Edson, and 
their several households, cast their lots with their kinsmen 
by settling in Otsego County, the one family at Fly Creek, 
within the bounds of the Cooper Patent, and the other 
within the limits of the Schuyler Patent, near Can- 
aderaga Lake. The name of " Mary Edson," in the list of 
letters remaining in the post-office, at Cooperstown, on 
January i, 1798, evidently in<hcates that Thomas Edson 
and his wife, Mary, were then residing in Otsego County, 
where, it would appear, their last two children were born; 
Theodatus (God-given), born on July 7. T798, and Elizabeth, 
on September 15, 1801. 

The inhabitants of Cooperstown and those of its vi- 
cinity were then sending and receiving letters through 
the post-office established in llie village on June i, 1794. 
At first the mail arrived and departed nnce a week for a 
number of years, and later twice, afterward thrice, and in 
1 82 1, daily. 

The first regularly settled minister of the Gospel in 



334 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Cooperstown was the Rev. Isaac Lewis, who became pastor 
of the congregation of Presbyterians and Congregationalists 
on October i, 1800. The Rev. Daniel Nash, popularly 
known as " Father Nash," a devout and zealous Protestant 
Episcopal missionary, who, not long after his ordination as 
a deacon in 1797, began visiting from time to time the differ- 
ent Episcopalian families living in Otsego County, was 
always a heartily welcomed guest at the homes of the Ed- 
sons, who not infrequently entertained his amiable wife. In 
1807, the Episcopalians erected a house of worship in the 
village of Cooperstown, a brick edifice, fifty-four feet long 
and forty wide. It was consecrated on July 8, 1810. The 
congregation was organized under the title of Christ Church, 
on January i, 181 1, and on the same day the Rev. Daniel 
Nash was chosen to be its rector. 

"Between the years 1795 and 1803, the growth of 
Cooperstown was gradual and steady. A document exists 
to show that in January of the latter year, the village con- 
tained seventy-five dwelling houses, thirty-four barns, and 
three hundred and forty-nine inhabitants." 

On Thursday, March 24, 1796, appeared in The Otsego 
Herald, the following announcement: 

"Lewis EofoN, jur., 
" Having engaged to ride as a Poft, for twelve months, and 
as his character is fuch as will entitle him to the confidence 
of all who may have occafion for his fervices, the Printer 
ho]jes he will remove the difagreeable impreffions which 
the knavery of fome and the fickle-nefs of others have left 
on the minds of the citizens. The inhabitants on his route 
may reft affured that neither ability nor fidelity will be 
wanting on the part of Mr. Edfon. — -Nothing is now lacking, 
but a general fubfcription, to fecure a good faithful Poft, 
who will make weekly the circuit of the county, the advan- 
tages of which are fo obvious, that the mo ft liberal en- 
couragement will be expected, by the Printer." 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 335 

The following "Advertisement" is in the Herald, issued 
on Thursday, May 19, 1796: 

" Notice is hereby given, to all thofc who are or wifh to 
become members of the Otfego Clothiers' Society, that they 
will meet at the houfe [inn] of Samuel Huntingdon, efq., in 
Cooperftown, on the second Thurfday in June next, at nine 
of the clock in the morning; to regulate their prices, and 
do fuch other bufinefs as fhall be thought necellary. By 
order of the Society. 

" O. Edson, Clerk. 
"May 12, 1796." 

The first conveyance of land to Thomas Edson in Otsego 
Countv, of which any record is preserved in the office of the 
clerk of the count}', in Cooperstown, is that made, on Sep- 
tember 19, 1809, b}^ Reuben Whipple and Alexander Mc- 
Cullock of the town and county of Otsego, who, for six 
hundred dollars, sold to him three acres, more or less, lying 
along Fly Creek, on the east side of the highway ; and also 
a fourth of an acre, more or less, beginning "at the corner 
of the mill-yard," and running south along the mill-pond; 
and also four acres, more or less, which embraced an " un- 
divided third part of the grist and saw mills and the yard 
thereunto belonging and of the land flowed by the said 
pond, on the west side of the said creek." 

To be the possessor of another "third ])art of the grist 
mill," described in that conveyance, "together with ])rivi- 
leges of water and land necessarily occupied for convenience 
of said mill," Thomas Edson purchased, on June 4, 181 1, of 
Daniel Brown, for one hundred and seventy dollars, the said 
one third part of the said property. To the ownershi]) of it, 
he, on December 16, 181 2, by the payment of two lumcb-ed 
and eighty dollars to James Lanson of the town of Warren, 
in Herkimer County, added that of one third of llie saw-mill 
on Fly Creek. 

By a deed, dated Scpteml)cr 13, 1813, he conveyed to his 



336 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

brother-in-law, Asahel Jarvis, for eight hundred and eleven 
dollars and forty- two cents the " two undivided third parts 
of the saw and the grist mill, on Fly Creek, near Sarah 
Carter's, with all the privileges thereunto belonging." 

As is disclosed by the following advertisement in the 
Herald, of June 6, 1812, Asahel Jarvis had then the superin- 
tendence of a carding-mill, on Oak Creek, a stream of con- 
siderable water-power, having its rise in Canaderaga Lake, 
and receiving the water of Fly Creek about a mile south of 
the site of the mill: 

" The subscribers have entered into a Co-partnership in 
the Carding business, and have furnished themselves with 
a good Picking-machine, and two Carding-machines, which 
are entirely new. One of them is covered with the finest 
kind of cards, suitable for carding Merino wool. The ma- 
chines are in complete operation at Fairchild's Mills, on 
Oak Creek, one mile west of Captain North's Inn, in the 
town of Otsego ; said machines are under the immediate 
direction of Mr. Asahel Jarvis, who is engaged to tend the 
same through the season, and whose experience in the above 
business is not surpassed by any in the country. Their 
accommodations, the complete order their works are in, and 
the faithfulness of the tender prompts them to warrant 
satisfaction to all who employ them, and as no other works 
erected on the dam shall interfere with [our] carding busi- 
ness, different customers may depend on being served with 
punctuality. 

" Most kinds of produce received in payment. 

"Wm. Fairchild, 
" Otsego, " Wm. C[ooper] Jarvis, 

"June 6, 1812." "JOSIAH STEPHENS. 

The extensive and increasing demands for woollen rolls 
or cardings that frugal and industrious matrons and their 
daughters spun into yarn of which they wove the greater 
part of the woollen stuffs made by them into clothing for 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 337 

the families of which they were members, justified the pro- 
prietors of the Oak Creek Mill in the expectation of obtaining 
sufficient patronage to insure them the success they de- 
sired when engaging in that yjarticular branch of business. 

The last recorded purchase of land made by Thomas 
Edson, in Otsego County, was on September i, 18 14, when 
Samuel Jones and Catharine his wife, for the sum of two 
hundred and twenty-five dollars, conveyed to him two 
acres and a half of land lying " on the north side of the turn- 
pike road and on the east line of John Barley's land," and 
having a point on its eastern boundary, "five chains and 
ninety- two links north of a sttimp near the southwest corner 
of the shoe-shop" then "occupied by the said Edson"; 
and " also a piece of land adjoining the southwest corner of 
the above described lot, twelve feet wide along the road 
and sixteen feet deep, whereon the shoe- shop" was stand- 
ing. Whether the shoe-shop had previously been used for 
the manufacture and sale of shoes, or was then used by the 
purchaser for conducting in it that branch of business, it is 
difficult to determine, for there are no other particulars set 
forth in the instrument of writing to lead one to a satisfactory 
conclusion regarding the import of the clause, " the shoe- 
shop now occupied l^y the said Edson." ' 

Assiduously engaged as Thomas Edson had evidently 
been since his settlement at Fly Creek in the cultivation of 
his land and the operation of his mills, he had, in 1813, on 
reaching the age of threescore years, begun releasing himself 
from the more burdensome cares of active life and devoting 
a part of his leisure to the furtherance of the welfare of his 
children, all of whom, except two, had already reached 
manhood or womanhood. 

Under the Act of Congress of June 7, 1832, he was en- 
rolled a Revolutionary War pensioner on May 18, 1833, 
with an annual allowance of thirty-six dollars and sixty-six 

' Book of Deeds, N, pp. 231, 232, 233; S, pp. 13, 14; Q, pp. 512, 513; in 
the office of the Clerk of Otsego County, New York, in Cooperstown. 



338 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

cents from March 4, 1831; his service being described as 
that of a private of the Massachusetts Continental Line, 
aged eighty years. 

His wife, Mary Jarvis, died in February, 1835, and he 
in the f oho wing year. Their bodies were buried at Fly 
Creek, and their graves marked by memorial stones, of 
which now no vestiges remain. 



Chapter XII 
William Jarvis Edson 

1 786-1848 

THE accessibility of newly vSettlcd localities, l)esi(les l)eing 
evidenced by the establishment in them of post-offices 
and the regular passage of stage-coaches on routes of which 
they were either termini or relay-points, was also con- 
firmed by stich places being made centres of visitation by 
travelling shows and itinerant concert troupes. The exhi- 
bition of Asiatic and African animals and reptiles singly or 
in small collections prior to the tours of circuses and me- 
nageries were incidents that awakened considerable interest 
in the frontier settlements about the l:)eginning of the 
present century. The exhibition of an elephant in Coopers- 
town, in 1 81 3, was announced with the following authorita- 
tive comment: " Perhaps the ])resent generation may never 
have an opportunity of seeing an elephant again, as this is 
the only one in the United States, and this is, ])erhaps, the 
last visit that it may make to this place." 

A large concourse of the able-bodied men belonging to 
the militia and the organized militar\' com])anies of Otsego 
Cpunty, who had ])atriotically served at points of defence 
during the War of 181 2-1 5, gathered on March t, 1815, at 
Cooperstown, with other gratified inhabitants, to celebrate 
the declaration of ])eace l)etween Great Britain and the Uni- 
ted States of America. On that day, as is related, " In s]nte 
of snow and cold weather, the streets of the village were 
paraded by the military, guns fired, and speeches delivered. " 

339 



340 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

On that occasion, no doubt, some of the younger and a few 
of the older members of the Edson famihes, residing in that 
neighborhood, participated in the pubhc rejoicings at the 
county-seat. 

PoUy," the eldest daughter of Thomas and Mary (Jarvis) 
Edson, at that time three-and- thirty years old, was the wife 
of John C. Marvin, whose parents had settled at an early 
day upon a farm at Fly Creek, having moved thither from 
Ballston Spa, in Saratoga County, N. Y. 

The marriage of the eldest living son of the same 
parents, at the age of twenty-three years, was probably the 
second event of that kind marking the withdrawal of a 
member of the household to a new home. As announced 
in The Impartial Observer, on Saturday, April i, 1809, it 
was solemnized on March 26, that year, and evidently at 
the house of the bride's parents, Abijah and Sarah (Howell) 
Fairchild, whose brother, William Fairchild, was one of the 
proprietors of the carding-mill, in 181 2, on Oak Creek. 

" Married — At Fly Creek, on the 26th ult., by the Rev. 
Daniel Nash, Mr. William Jarvis Edson, to Miss Polly Fair- 
child, both of Otsego. 

" May Hymen now propitious prove, 
Bestowing naught but joy and love! 
Long may they hve and love most true, 
And taste the joys ordain'd for few! 
But should their wayward fate ordain, 
That they should suffer grief and pain : 
True Love will brighten ev'ry woe, 
And give its flames still brighter glow; 
Thus they will solace find in each, 
More than e'er Wealth or Power could reach." 

William Jarvis Edson, inheriting the sturdy energy of 
his father and the amiable disposition of his mother, was 
enabled in a few years after his marriage to acquire besides 
a modest income, sufficient means to buy certain property in 
the immediate vicinity of his abode. Learning that James 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 341 

N. and Asahel H. Jarvis were offering for sale three and one 
fourth acres of land Ivinsf alone: the east bank of Oak Creek 
and on the west side of the turnpike road; as also one un- 
divided moitey or half-part of a certain piece of land lying 
south of the grist-mill then in possession of William Fair- 
child and Joseph Stephens, and west of an island in Oak 
Creek, and north of the turnpike bridge, and east of the 
main west bank of the said creek, together with one equal 
undivided half of the carding establishment erected thereon, 
and one equal half-right of the privilege of using water 
sufficient to operate two carding-machines ; he, on October 
22, 1 81 3, purchased the same for the sum of nine hundred 
dollars. 

Whether he relinquished farming, wholly or partly, and 
bestowed his time and attention, entirely or at intervals, on 
the operation of the carding factory, is not known. The 
long inhibition by Great Britain of the manufacture of 
cotton and woollen fabrics in the American colonies retarded 
for some years after the War of the Revolution the estab- 
lishment of cotton and woollen factories in the thirteen 
States. "The report of Alexander Hamilton on manu- 
factures in 1 791," as is chronicled, "speaks of a mill for 
cloths and cassimeres as in operation at Hartford, Connecti- 
cut, but conveys a doubt whether American wool was suit- 
able for fine cloths. The census of 18 10, without making: 
it evident that there was within the wState at the time a 
single woollen manufactory, gives for New York the number 
of looms (largely in ])ri\\ate hands) as 33,068, with 413 
carding-machines, 427 fulling-mills, and 26 cotton manu- 
factories." 

After nearly two years' possession of the land along Oak 
Creek and the one undivided half-part of the carding estab- 
lishment and of the water privilege ai)])crtaining to it, Wil- 
liam Jarvis Edson, considering it would not be wise for him 
to retain the ownershi]) of the ])roperty, when, as a conse- 
quence of the termination of the war between England and 



342 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the United States of America, the value of real estate was 
rapidly depreciating, he judiciously sold it in three parcels; 
one part to the Oakville Cotton Factory Company, on 
August 2 2, 1 815, another to William Williams, Junior, and 
another, on October 21, to the Oakville Cotton Factory 
Company, for sums aggregating nearly the amount that he 
had paid for the property. 

The decrease of prices to one third their previous quota- 
tion, particularly of articles of daily consumption and use, 
caused losses which reduced many persons to immediate 
poverty or financial straits that were widely afflictive in 
their consequences. Kent, a son of Asahel and Abigail 
(Griswold) Jarvis, born at Fly Creek, on June 13, 1801, in 
later years often adverted to the distress which some of the 
settlers in that part of Otsego County suffered by the sudden 
depreciation of the prices of country produce, manufactured 
goods, and commodities, in 181 5. As related by a biog- 
rapher, the money which his father, Asahel Jarvis, "had 
accumulated was lost in the general crash that ruined so 
many btisiness men after the close of the war with England, 
in 181 5," and his young son Kent "was therefore thrown 
upon his own resources and forced to seek employment at 
the age of fourteen, and begin a seven-years' apprenticeship 
in a woollen factory at Burlington in the same county." 

In 182 1 , having returned to Fly Creek, and being "master 
of the business of wool-carding, dyeing, and cloth-dressing, 
he rented the establishment formerly occupied by one of his 
employers at Oak Creek, then belonging to the estate of 
Eliphalet Williams, and set up for himself." Although he 
had not yet attained his majority, he married, on May 17, 
182 1 , Euretta M., a daughter of Eliphalet WilHams deceased. 

The carding establishment of which William Jarvis 
Edson was a half -owner in 181 5, was operated, in 1837, by 
Leander Plum, and in 1901, by Delos Comstock; the two 
carding-machines purchased in 181 2 being, it is said, still 
in use in the factory. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 343 

William Jarvis and Polly (Fairchild) Edson lived, as it 
appears, a short time at Exeter, a village in the town of 
Exeter, in Otsego County, about five miles northwest of 
Fly Creek, where, on August 14, 181 1, their second son, 
Clement Massillon, was born ; their first child and son, Tracy 
Robinson, having been born at Fly Creek, on Deceml)er 12, 
1809, where also their third child and son, Marmont Bryan, 
was born on April 12, 181 3. From Fly Creek the family 
moved to the village of Oxford, in the town of Oxford, 
Chenango County, N. Y., on the east Ijank of the Che- 
nango River, thirty-five miles southwest of Fly Creek, and 
thirty from Binghamton, in Broome County, N. Y., where 
their first daughter, Mary Augusta, was born on February 
I, 1819. Thence the household moved to the village of 
Oneonta, in the town of Oneonta, Otsego Cormty, twenty- 
two miles south of Cooperstown, where their fifth and last 
child, and second daughter, Susan Maria, was born on 
April 9, 1826. As is related, all their children were baptized 
by the Rev. Daniel Nash. 

The inviting offers made to settlers l:)y the Holland Land 
Company, having its principal office at Batavia, in the town 
of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., about one hundred and 
sixty miles northwest of Fly Creek, two hundred and forty- 
four west of Albany, and forty northeast of Buffalo, led 
William Jarvis Edson to i^urchase, on March 27, 1 8 2 7 , an area 
of land in the town of Batavia, containing fifty-four acres, 
more or less, lying along the west side of the Alleghany 
Road. He was then forty-one years of age. In A]M"il, 
probably, he seated his family upon the farm, which he 
cultivated seven years, with the assistance of liis three sons, 
the eldest of whom was, at the time of the ])urchase of it, 
eighteen years old, the second fifteen, and [hv third fourteen. 
Their tasks on the farm, besides strengthening their bodies 
and invigorating their mental faculties, gax'e them an ex- 
perience of toil and its fruits that was of inestimable \alue 
to them afterward in the dilTcM-ent callini^sof their manhood. 



344 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Individually distinguished as the father was by the pos- 
session of a natural musical voice and the art of attractively 
and effectively using it, he in time became deeply impressed 
with the belief in his ability to instruct others in the acquire- 
ment of vocal skill and the knowledge of the principles of 
harmony. Governed ultimately by an inclination to afford 
those who were desirous of cultivating their voices and at- 
taining the art of vocally interperting tonic characters, he 
wrote a short exposition of the art of singing, comprising 
thirty pages, and forming the introductory part of the 
work, copyrighted on November 5, 1827, and entitled: 
Musical Monitor, or New- York Collection of Church Musick. 

Mack & Andrus, the publishers, besides being the pro- 
prietors of a bookstore in the village of Ithaca, were also the 
owners of the Ithaca journal and General Advertiser, in 
which, on December 23, 1829, they inserted the following 
announcement : 

" The copy-right of the above work having vested in the 
subscribers, they will continue to publish the same. A new 
edition, revised and corrected is preparing for the press. 
It will be well executed and published as soon as practi- 
cable. The Class-Book, or introductory part, is a clear, 
simple, and correct analysis of the Science of Musick, better 
adapted to the purposes of instruction for which such com- 
pilations are principally designed, than any similar work 
which is now before the publick. The future editions will 
be revised and corrected, and the publication superintended 
by Mr. Edson; which is a guaranty that past errours in the 
selection and arrangement of tunes will be corrected, and 
that the work will be strictly conformed to the rules of 
science, and the refined and improving taste of the present 
day. The patronage of Teachers of Musick and the Pub- 
lick generally, is therefore confidently invited. Our breth- 
ren of the trade, whose aid we solicit in the premises, and all 
who purchase to sell again, may rely upon having a good 
work, and upon favourable terms." 



IHUSICAI^ MONITOll, 



oi; 



I II 

CHUiUII ML SICK: 
THK i.l.EMENTAllY CLASS-BOOK, 

AN INTRODrCTfON 

OaiB^CE OP ICUTiSiaZ, 






■.«BKANf;Ll> ASn SYsVL.V.AT'JfJ.ti 

BV WJf.f.! \M I, r.V^(i\ 



<;aOICE COLLKCTIO.V 01 ISALM AMj IIVMN TUN'ES,.SET PI LCI 
AND AMTiinMS, 

!l\R\IOMZKI; FOR TWy, TUUEr •'^' FOIK VOICl'.s. 

AND AtlAPTKO TO ll'Bl ; 



BY KPJIK AI3I KEED. 



JIFTM REVISED E0IT1ON, ENLARGED AND IMITiOVEl' 



ITHACA . 
riUNTED BY MACK i. AxNDULs 

1837, 



345 



346 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

The announcement of the pubHcation of the sixth edi- 
tion was made on August ii, 1830, as follows: 

" New & Improved Collection of Church Musick just 
published by Mack & Andrus, Ithaca, the Musical Monitor, 
or New York Collection of Church Musick : being a selection 
of Psalm and Hymn Tunes of the most approved character. 
Also, Set Pieces, Anthems and Chants, embracing a great 
variety of Style, selected from the works of the most Emi- 
nent Composers, Together with the Elementary Class-Book, 
Introductory to the Science of Musick. By William J. 
Edson. Sixth edition — corrected, enlarged, and greatly 
improved. 

" In the revision and correction of this work, much care 
has been bestowed by the experienced and scientific editor, 
and the publishers on their part have spared no pains to 
render it worthy of the public patronage. Modern taste 
has been consulted; the genuine improvements of the day 
have been adopted; and the selections, whether new or old, 
are chaste in style and devotional in character. 

"The Class-Book, or elementary part of the work, is 
designed to teach by proper steps and gradations the ele- 
ments of vocal science in a systematick manner, somewhat 
upon the Monitorial plan, and this, (as originally published 
in former editions) was the first attempt to carry that sys- 
tem into our primary musick schools. The publishers, 
therefore, invite for the entire work the strictest scrutiny, 
and solicit the patronage of the friends of vocal science, con- 
fident that it will be found as an elementary work for the 
use of Singing Schools, and as a collection for the use of 
Musical Societies and Congregations, equal to any work of 
the class which is now published. 

" IM^ For sale by the publishers at their Bookstore in 
Ithaca. — Also, by Collins & Hanny, and Collins & Co., New 
York; Oliver Steel, and Little & Cummings, Albany; N. G. 
Elliot, Catskill; J. C. Kemble, Troy; H. & E. Phinney, 
Cooperstown; H. & E. Phinney & Co., Utica; Knowlton & 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 347 

Rice, Watertown; Day, Follett & Haskins, Buffalo; A. 
Parker, Batavia; E. Peck & Co., and Marshall, Dean & Co. 
Rochester; Morse, Ward & Co., Canandaigita; J. Bogert, 
Geneva; U. F. Doubleday, and T. M. vStaincr, Auburn; 
Mack & Chapman, Oxford; and 1)y Booksellers generally." 

The work was copyrighted by Mack & Andrus, under 
the laws of the United States, on June 3, 1830, as confirmed 
by " R. R. Lansing, clerk of the District Court of the 
United States for the Northern District of New York." 

The public appreciation of the value of the two succes- 
sive editions of the work, prefaced, as they severally were, 
by the Introduction to the Science of Musick, was immediate 
and wide-spread. It was a period when the art of singing 
by note was esteemed an acquirement of more than ordi- 
nary distinction. This fact is not only held in special re- 
membrance by the oldest inhabitants of the United States, 
but is disclosed by numberless published reminiscences of 
deceased people. Singing-schools, partictilarly in winter, 
were flourishing or being organized wherever there were 
people sufficient in number to sustain them. Persons of 
vocal ability and proficient as teachers of written music 
were yearly in great request in the fall, winter, and spring 
months to take charge not only of bodies of young men and 
maidens, but of those of middle-aged men and women seek- 
ing instruction and practice in the principles of harmony. 
Each season brought increased demands for the best and 
latest published tune-books. Part singing, for which large 
classes were commonly divided according to the distinction 
of voices into soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, was a notable 
feature of the singing-schools that drew great numbers of 
persons, male and female, to engage in it. 

The annual concerts given by these schools were enter- 
• tainments that attracted great audiences of people of the 
neighborhoods in whicli lliex' were held. Man\' bodies of 
associated singers representing these schools were not in- 
frequently organized, under sueli names as the Handel 



348 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Society, the Haydn Society, and Mozart Society, and 
displayed their skill from time to time in singing sacred 
oratorios and popular operas. 

Congregational singing was then an attractive feature 
of the stated services of many churches, and not a few vied 
with one another in gathering large assemblies of people on 
Sundays to enjoy such devotional exercises. The innova- 
tion of orchestral instruments, such as bass-viols, violins, 
clarionets, flutes, and brass horns, to support the voices of 
the members of church choirs when singing, caused not a 
little discussion and dissension in the congregations. Some 
of the most prejudiced persons, holding in contempt the use 
of instruments of music in places of divine worship, re- 
proachfully styled the violins and violoncellos, played in 
the choirs, "the devil's fiddles." 

William Jarvis Edson, finding himself after the publica- 
tion of the sixth edition of the Musical Monitor in growing 
repute as an author and in wide request as an instructor in 
the art of singing, determined to devote his entire time 
thereafter to the compilation and composition of music, re- 
ligious and secular, and to imparting such knowledge of 
vocalization and the principles of harmony as should be 
desired by individuals, choirs, and schools engaging him as 
an instructor. With this purpose in view, he, on July i, 
1834, sold his property in the town of Batavia, Genesee 
County, N. Y., to George Davis, of that county, for the sum 
of two thousand dollars.' Regarding the city of New York 
as a favorable place of residence, where his two sons, Tracy 
Robinson and Clement Massillon, were pursuing profes- 

^ A Condensed History of Cooperstown, with a Biographical Sketch of jf. 
Fenimore Cooper. By the Rev. S. T. Livermore. Albany, 1862. P. 121. — 
History of Otsego County, New York, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches 
of Some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Published by Everts & Fariss, 
Philadelphia, 1878. P. 250. — Book of Deeds, T, pp. 446,508, 509; Y, pp. 128,' 
129; in the office of the Clerk of Otsego County, New York, at Cooperstown. — 
The American Cyclopcedia, 1876. Vol. xvi., p. 716. — -The Jarvis Family. Hart- 
ford, 1879. Pp. 164, 165. — 500& o/Z)e^t/5, No. 13, p. 353; No. 32, p. 209; in the 
office of the Clerk of Genesee County, at Batavia, N. Y. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 349 

sions, he, as it would seem, moved thither in the summer of 
1834, with his wife, youngest son, Marmont Bryan, two 
daughters, Mary Augusta and Susan Maria, the last-named 
being at that time eight years old. The family began occu- 
pying a house, known as number 17, on Beach Street, 
which continued to be their home for eleven successive 
years; as also it was that of the eldest son, Tracy Robinson, 
for five. As a professor of music, William Jarvis Edson, the 
father, found the metropolis to be a highly advantageous 
field for the exercise of his vocal ability and scientific attain- 
ments. A modest but highly popular work, entitled The 
Vocal Guide, of which he was the author, was published, in 
1843, by Saxton & Miles, 205 Broadway.' 

Clement Massillon Edson, having acquired an education 
that gave him a marked distinction as a versatile and at- 
tractive writer, became (being in the twenty-third year of 
his age), in May, 1834, with Lewis Gaylord Clark, the editors 
and proprietors of the Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly 
Magazine, a periodical at that time entering the seven- 
teenth month of its publication. 

As historically related, at the "Editor's Table," in sev- 
eral issues of the magazine, l:)eginning in the February 
number of the year 1859 : " The first number of the Knicker- 
bocker Magazine was issued on the first da}'' of January, 
1833, under the editorial charge of Charles Fenno Hoffman, 
Esq. He chose to adopt the title Knickerbacker (with the 
a), as being more consonant with the spelling adopted by 
the honored families of that name, long resident in the snug 
nesting-places along the Hudson. It was but a short time, 
however, before it was made to assume the cognomen of 
the immortal historian of New York, as given to that worthy 
by his godfather, Washington Irving. . . . 

"Mr. Hoffman continued only for a com]:)arativcly brief 

' The Vocal Guide, A First Book for Schools and Classes in Vocal Music; 
etc. By William J. Edson. Second edition. Published by Saxton & Miles, 20^ 
Broadway; A. V. Blake, S4 Gold Street, Boston. Saxton and Pierce, 1843. 
Copyright under Act of Congress, 1S42, 



350 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

period to discharge the editorial duties of the Knickerbocker: 
he subsequently became the proprietor and chief editor of 
The American Monthly Magazine, which he conducted for 
a long time with signal ability. . . . We have never 
learned why it was that Mr. Hoffman's connection with the 
Knickerbocker ceased as soon as it did; but from what we 
have heard, we have been led to the inference, that it was 
owing to some disagreement between himself and the first 
publisher of the work; a stirring, little business man, smart 
as a Yankee steel- trap, who knew how to set up his little sails 
wherever they would ' draw, ' singly or all together, the 
slightest breath of the aura popnlaris. Not but that he 
meant to make a good work of the Magazine—for Bryant, 
Sands, Paulding were contributors of excellent papers, in 
prose and verse, to the very first number: but literary 
'puffing' seemed more 'glaring and flaring' at that period 
than it does at present: and Mr. Hoffman's publisher did 
not fail to avail himself of the requisite devices, to the fullest 
extent. 

" In the commencement of the Fourth Number of the 
Second Volume of the Knickerbocker, in October, 1833, the 
Rev. Timothy Flint, then recently from the West, assumed 
the editorship of the work, . . . ' disavowing any 
agency in the supervision of the work, up to that time,' he 
explained briefly his motives for ' taking the burthen upon 
his shoulders.' In the hope of re-establishing his health, 
which had become impaired during his residence in the 
West, he was desirous of trying a change of climate. . . . 

"The first 'pen-scratch' of ours which appeared in this 
Magazine, was published in the number for April, 1834. It 
was entitled A Contrasted Picture and was really what it 
purported to be, a story founded in the main upon actual 
fact and 'some' personal observation. We left the manu- 
script with the publisher at the office of the Knickerbocker, 
then at the corner of Vesey Street and Broadway (for then 
the Astor House was not, but gentlemen's dwellings). . . . 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 351 

" One morning, after the ])ublication of the httle sketch 
called .4 Contrasted Picttirc (it had been ])rinted in that 
Magazine!), we dropped in, to see the ]niblisher. 'Com- 
munity,' we had no doubt was excited in relation to the 
article. Upon inquiry, the publisher said that it was even 
so : community was excited, and had asked for the name of 
the author. 

" ' Did you infcM-m the inquirers from whose pen pro- 
ceeded the article in question?' 

" ' I did not: but simply said: " It is from the pen of a 
person who will make his mark by-and-by." ' 

" He was right: ' the mark' was made, in the shape of a 
signature — a joint signature — whereby Lewis Gay lord Clark 
and Clement M. Edson became the owners and possessors 
of the Knickerbocker Magazine. (The payment of certain 
moneys was rendered necessary : and these ' moneys ' were 
advanced, for both of us, by the truest, most genial, warm- 
hearted friends in the world. Gone, some of them, now: 
but surely, ' their reward is with them.') 

"Well: we commenced the Knickerbocker. There was 
something in the very name of the work which made us 
proud: and that pride, we are not ashamed to say, lingers 
with us even until now. 

"We went to our artist-friend, Mr. F. W. Edmonds, of 
the Mechanics' Bank, in Wall Street, to |)re])are for us a 
design — the head of an authentic Knickerbocker. ]\v did 
it: pipe, round-crowned hat; cat sleeping under an old- 
fashioned arm-chair, with a wide look-out for the old Dutch 
gentleman toward ancient Pavonia, or Communi])aw: the 
' House of the Four (Chimneys,' belonging to Van Horn, the 
First Oysterman, occupying all the visible back-ground. 

"We are getting a little before our storw Before con- 
summating the ])urchase of the Knickerbocker Magazitie 
from Mr. Peabody — a parched ])ea. al\va\s on a hot shovel 
— we took counsel from i)ru(lent and considerate friends. 
We went to see Colonel William L. Stone, at the olhce of the 



352 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Commercial Advertiser, in William Street, near the corner 
of Pine. We remember now the sun shining on the back of 
a bound copy of Mr. Hezekiah Niles's Register. 

" We presented a letter to Mr. Stone, from a gentle- 
man in 'old Onondaga,' who had taken the Neiv York 
Spectator for many years. We stated, in very brief and 
simple words, our business. Mr. Celment M. Edson was 
with us. 

"Colonel Stone knew us, and had a regard for us, es- 
pecially for our twin-brother Willis, who had written several 
pieces of poetry for the Commercial Advertiser, which had 
the newness and freshness — ' the dew of his youth ' — ^and 
which had proved widely popular. 

"We opened our business to Colonel Stone, after the 
delivery of the letter : 

"'Colonel Stone, you have much experience in litera- 
ture; and we young men, with great confidence in your 
mature judgment, have come to ask you for your counsel 
and advice. We have bought the Knickerbocker Magazine; 
and propose to publish it, and try to make it a good work, 
which will afford us a living, and perhaps do honor to our 
periodical literature.' 

"'Ah!' said the colonel, putting his long, thin, white 
fingers to his chin, and then brushing back the ' cow-lick ' of 
his stiff black hair on his forehead; ' you have bought it, eh? 
Then what do you want advice about ? The deed is done, is 
n't it?' 

"We nodded assent. 'lam sorry for it,' said the coV 
onel: 'it is a very precarious dependence. From the very 
first, there has never been a magazine published in America, 
which has paid its expenses, from the old Port-Folio, down 
to the jiresent time. I wish you well, boys,' added the 
colonel, (and Mr. Francis Hall, raised his big eye-brows, and 
gave forth a smile from his thin lips,) ' but I think you have 
missed it. But be certain of one thing, however : whatever 
I can do for you, in the columns of The Commercial, or in 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 353 

your own pages, I will do. Don't let me detain yoti: (sly 
dog!) These are business hours, and TJic Couimercial is 
an evening paper.' 

'' We left — and Mr. Hall smiled again. 

"Well, the deed was done: and from that hour the 
Knickerbocker Magazine became a fixed fact in our existence. 

" It was a great pleasure for us to see the name of our 
periodical inscribed high up on the gal)le of Messrs. Wiley 
& Long's, number 161 Broadway. Many and man\' a 
time did it give us a thrill of delight, when we had n't 
twenty-five cents in our pocket. But who kneiv it? 

"There had been so much ])uffing; such an enormous 
cry, with a limited amount of wool, on the part of the pro- 
prietor of the Knickerbocker, that we determined, at the 
outset, that we would at least avoid an imitation of that 
style of literature. So when we commenced, we said the 
following words, to wit: 

'"It will be seen, by reference to the im])rint of this 
magazine, that it has passed into other hands, and will 
hereafter be issued under different auspices than heretofore. 

" ' A brief outline of the course intended to be ])ursued 
in the future management of the work, will be ]:)ardoned, 
the more readily, it may be, that our readers are assured 
that we shall seldom trouble them with mere jn^nmises. 

No exertions will he left unem]jk)yed, to render the 
work honorable to American Periodical Literature, and 
acceptable to the public, whose patronage is only so far 
solicited, as it shall seem to be deserved. 

The original ])apers, which it is designed shall be so 
varied as to form a combination of the solid and the useful, 
with the entertaining and the agreeable, will be from literary 
pens of established re])utation in different cities and ])(^r- 
tions of the United States. 

" ' /Acceptable original articles will be j^aid for at such 

rates as the encouragement of the enter] )rise shall seem to 

warrant. 
23 



354 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" ' In addition to the original papers, liberal space will be 
devoted, under the head of " Literary Notices," to brief and 
candid reviews of new works, of proper distinction, with 
such extracts as may be necessary to add interest, or to 
evince the justice of the accompanying criticism.' 

" Now this Prospectus was well considered. It agitated 
our whole thimble-full of brains for over a whole night : we 
woke up on the morning of April first — ' auspicious morn, ' 
of 1834 — and on the following day it was expanded before 
the public. A feature — it was sl ' feature, ' as it turned out — 
was a 'Monthly Compendium,' comprising, in a succinct 
form, all events of importance which might occur during 
the month, 'with such remarks, or illustrative comments, as 
they ffiight demand. ' 

The issue for May, 1834, number five of the third volume, 
appeared with the changed title-page : 

"The Knickerbocker 

or 

New York Monthly Magazine. 

vol. III. 

New York: 
Clark and Edson, Proprietors, 

1834." 

By no little expenditure of energy and good judgment, 
the two enterprising partners were soon delighted to find 
their venture returning them the means of support more 
ample than they had been led to expect, and the circula- 
tion of the periodical increasing with an ever-growing 
number of intelligent and appreciative subscribers. It 
speedily began to be recognized as the leading magazine 
of the country; its contributors being of the best and 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 355 

most popular of the contemporary writers of prose and 
verse in the United vStates. The zealous and gratified 
editors and proprietors modestly realized that the high 
place it had attained in the esteem of the pul:)lic was due to 
the fact that it was then the tnost meritorious ])criodical 
published in the city of New York. 

Clement Massillon Edson, at the close of the year 1839, 
sold his interest in the periodical, as was announced in the 
January number for 1840: "The business department of 
the Knickerbocker Magazine (having changed hands 1)\- the 
purchase of the interest of Mr. C. M. Edson, one of the ])art- 
ners of the late firm of Clark and Edson,) will hereafter be 
conducted by Mr. James T. Dean." Clement M. Edson 
did not, however, relinquish his editorial connection with 
the magazine, it would seem, at that time, but held that 
position at the office of the publication at 161 Broadway, 
during a part or perhaps the whole of the year 1840. Then 
he took up the ]^ractice of law, and in the years 1842, '43, 44 
had his office at 27 Wall Street, which, in 1845, ^^ changed 
to 44 Wall Street, where he received his clients until the 
spring of 1848. At that time, holding the position of 
Illinois Commissioner, he removed his law office to 2 Han- 
over Street. In the spring of 1850, he took an office at 35 
Wall Street, which he occupied until his death, on the sixth 
of April, 1853. 

The following announcement of it was published in the 
New York Daily Tribune, of Thursday, A])ril 7, 1853: 

"Edson. — April 6, Clement M. Edson, Esq., Counsellor- 
at-Law, aged 42 years. 

"Friends of the deceased and of liis brother, Tracy R. 
Edson, are respectfully in\-itcd to attentl liis funeral, on 
Friday, the 8th instant at } before 10 o'clock in the morn- 
ing, at No. 53 Murray Street." 

In the Ma\- ninnl)er of TJie Knickerbocker, or Neiv York 
Monthly Magazine, for that year, the following tribute to 
his memor\', was gi\cn in the " lulilor's Table": 




CLEMENT MASSILLON EDSON 



356 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 357 

" The recent death of Mr. Clement M. Edson, of this city, 
has been announced in ah our ])ul:)hc journals. Mr. Edson 
was for some six years a joint-] )roprietor with the Editor 
of this Magazine, and in its success and reputation always 
took the liveliest interest. For many qualities of head and 
heart he was held in deserved esteem. He had a c[uick 
perception of the humorous and the beautiful, and his judg- 
ment in literary matters generally was excellent. After 
disposing of his interest in the Knickerbocker, he com- 
menced the study and practice of the law, in which he was 
achieving both reputation and success when Death called 
him hence to be here no more for ever. He was followed to 
his beautiful resting-place in Greenwood by a large number 
of attached friends and mourning relatives. May he rest 
in peace." 

Tracy Robinson Edson, the elder l)rother of Clement 
Massillon Edson, began his successful Ijusiness career in the 
city of New York in 1832, where, on the first of March, that 
year, he conjointly with Freeman Rawdon and George Whit- 
field Hatch, severally of that city, and Ral])h Rawdon, 
"Ashel" Clark, and " Neziah" Wright, severally of Albany, 
N. Y., effected the organization of a partnership of the 
bank-note engraving firms of Rawdon, Clark & Company, 
and Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Company; the first-named 
firm to conduct the business in the cit}^ of Albany at 55 vState 
Street, and the second, at 35 Merchants' Exchange Building, 
in WaU Street, in New York City.^ From 1835 to 1847, 
Tracy Robinson Edson of the firm of Rawdon, Wright. 
Hatch & Company, resided in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 
charge of its business in that city. 

The art of engraving was at that time ra]:)idly growing 
into popular favor as a means of perfecting and protecting 
the value of bank-notes, stock certificates, and bonds. The 



' The original instrunuMit in Tracy Robinson Edson's handwriting, bearing 
the signatures of the members of the two firms, is still in the possession of one of 
the descendants of Charles Toppan of. New York Cit}-. 




358 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 359 

skill of counterfeiters in imitating the inferiorly engraved 
notes of many banks then current brought such ill-repute 
upon those institutions that prudent ])eople would no longer 
accept such notes. In order to detect the counterfeit notes 
in circulation, banks, merchants, and manufacturers were for 
many years obliged to obtain from regularly published regis- 
ters of counterfeit money all the descriptive and pictorial 
particulars respecting that which was in circulation. This 
inconvenience and the disinclination of the |)ul)lic to further 
the circulation of poorly engraved although genuine bank- 
notes speedily brought into high estimation the unexception- 
ably fine and artistic bank-notes engraved and printed by the 
firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson (so titled in 1847). 

An ornately engraved circular, elaborately embellished 
with twenty handsome vignettes issued by the firm in 
January, 1854, presented the following information: 

" Bank note engraving. Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & 
Edson, No. 48 Merchants' Exchange, New York: Offices at 
Albany, Cincinnati, & New Orleans. Also at Boston, under 
the name of the New England Bank Note Company, since 
May I, 1848. 

"The undersigned are prepared, at either of the above 
places, to execute all orders for Bank Note Engraving and 
Printing, with promptitude and fidelity, and ample provision 
is made for the safety of all plates and impressions entrusted 
to their care. Their specimens embrace a great variety of 
Vignettes and Ornamented Die work, suitable for Bank 
Notes, Bonds, Bills of Exchange, Bills of Lading, Deposit & 
Stock Certificates, Di])lomas, Checks, &c., accumulated at 
great expense, and illustrating almost e\'cr\- subject con- 
nected with the business of the country ; and the su]3eriority 
of their style of work, as affording the best possible securit>' 
against counterfeiting, is established by the success of their 
efforts, which have been devoted to the allaininenl of thai 
object, during an ex])erience of lhirl\- \ears ])asl." 

The critical acumen and adminislrali\e cnerg\ ol Tracy 



360 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



Robinson Edson had in so many different ways furthered 
the business interests of the firm that his copartners did not 
hesitate to co-operate with him in 1858, when he divulged 
to them his views regarding the advantages that would be 
realized by the consolidation of all the bank-note engraving 
companies in the United States, having as a common object 




MERCHANTS' EXCHANGE BUILDING, WALL ST., N. Y.— LATER, 
CUSTOM HOUSE 

the elevation of the character of bank-note engraving and 
printing for the purpose of making counterfeiting more 
difficult and detectable. Through his individual efforts 
the undertaking was successful in securing the co-opera- 
tion of the leading bank-note companies of the country, 
and, on April 26, 1858, the American Bank Note Company 
was organized. The Merchants' Exchange Building, on 
Wall Street, was heightened two stories to afford the com- 
pany the use of the rooms on the upper floors; its offices 
being on the ground floor.. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 361 

The firms composing the American Bank Note Company 
were Toppan, Carpenter & Company, Philadel])hia; Raw- 
don, Wright, Hatch & Edson, New York City; Danforth, 
Perkins & Company; Jocelyn, Draper, Welch & Company; 
Wellstood, Hay & Whiting; Bald, Causland & Company; 
and John E. Gavit of Albany. The presidents of the com- 
pany were: Charles Toppan, from 1858 to i860; Tracy 
Robinson Edson, from i860 to 1863; George Whitfield 
Hatch, from 1863 to 1866; John E. Gavit, from 1866 to 
1874; Albert G. Goodall, from 1874 to 1887 ; and afterward 
James Macdonough. 

"The high position attained by the American engravers 
is manifested by the confidence reposed in their talents and 
integrity by foreign governments and corporations, orders 
having been received at various times, not only from the 
United States Government, but from Russia, Italy, Spain, 
Greece, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Australia, Mexico, Hon- 
duras, Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colom- 
bia, Brazil, the Argentine Re|niblic, Bolivia, Chili, Peru. 
Ecuador, San Domingo, Hayti, and others. 

" The most eminent engravers of the country have de- 
voted their talents to the embellishment of our bank-notes, 
including A. B. Durant of New York, who became presi- 
dent of the National Acaderay of Design, a ])U])il of Peter 
Maverick; J. W. Casilear of New York, who attained very 
high rank as a landscape painter ; S. Jocelyn of Connecticut ; 
Alfred Jones, born in England, who came to America at an 
early age; Mosley I. Danforth of New York; James Smillie, 
a native of Scotland; Felix O. C. Darley of Philadeliihia, 
who as a designer of vignettes had no equal, his drawings 
being beautiful works of art; F. Rawdon of New York, and 
many others." 

Hardly had the American Bank Note Coni])any acquired 
the facilities for furthering its Imsiness wlicii the Civil War 
began, and the United States GovernnK'nl. in order to ex- 
pedite the increase of its armed forces and to maintain the 



362 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

troops garrisoning its forts and in camps and in action in 
different fields of defence and conflict, proposed the issuance 
of notes, bonds, and other securities in enormous c[uan- 
tities to meet its current expenses. Aware of this intention, 
and knowing that such certificates would have to be pains- 
takingly engraved and printed to deter counterfeiting, 
Tracy Robinson Edson promptly went to the seat of the 
National Government about the end of June, 1861, to ob- 
tain for the American Bank Note Company such contracts 
as might be awarded it. There he became an interested 
observer of some of the memorable incidents marking the 
introductory part of the Civil War, of which he made the 
following mention in a letter addressed to his youngest 
sister, Susan Maria Edson: 

"Washington, D. C, 4th July, 1S61. 

"My dear Sister Susan: 

" This has been a memorable day in Washington, twenty 
thousand troops (New- York Volunteers, under the com- 
mand of Major-General Sanford,) were reviewed at eight 
o'clock this morning by General Scott and the President; 
afterwards two flags were raised — one in Lafayette Square, 
and another at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue, and at 
twelve o'clock, the two houses of Congress met and organ- 
ized in extra Session, on account of the Rebellion. 

" I visited the Senate, and after they adjourned I went 
to the House of Representatives, which was then engaged 
in electing a Speaker. When the Speaker and Clerk were 
elected, the House adjourned until to-morrow at twelve 
o'clock, when the President's message will be read. 

" There will probably be considerable engraving to be 
done in connection with the Government loans, and I am 
waiting here till I can get the contract for it — I may have 
to remain till Monday or Tuesday next, but I hope not — -in 
either case you must not be anxious about me — I am well, 
and the weather is fine though warm. Mr. N. P. Willis is 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 363 

here, also Mr. Beecher, Mr. Weed, Mr. Gavit, and many 
others that I know. Beecher is still waiting for that ap- 
pointment, and says he has the promise of it. 

" I hope you are all well, and that you have got safely 
over the ' Fourth. ' 

"Had I known I should remain here so long, I would 

have asked you to write me, but I know you know how to 

communicate with me in case you have occasion, and so I 

am not anxious. 

" Affectionately 

" Your brother, 

"Tracy. 
"With love to Ma, May, & Marmont." 

Shortly thereafter the American Bank Note Company 
was through his agency awarded contracts for making dies 
and plates for United States notes, bonds, and certificates, and 
for the printing from the same in large quantities ; the notes 
being sent to the Treasury Department. He individually 
purchased the patent of a Canadian for an ink of an inde- 
structible green tint that the National Government adopted 
for the printing in part of its notes, whereby they came to 
be styled "greenbacks." As a consequence of the use of 
the ink, he obtained a handsome royalty that laid the 
foundation of his future wealth. His s])irited activity in 
furthering the interests of the American Bank Note Com- 
pany greatly advanced the value of its capital stock; the 
company, according to the certificate of its incorjKjration, 
filed on i\pril 29, 1858, in the office of the Secretary of 
State, having then a cash capital of five thousand dollars, 
and, at the time of its first contracts with the United States 
Government, a nominal capital of one million two liundred 
and fifty thousand dollars, represented b\' shares which 
were below ])ar in the market. Not knig afterward the 
company, it is said, made annual dixideiuls of thirty ]>er 
cent, on its nominal capital. 

By an agreement, made on December 27, 1878. the 




\ 



\ 




364 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 365 

American Bank Note Company, the National Bank Note 
Company, and the Continental Bank Note Company be- 
came consolidated under the name of the American Bank 
Note Company, with a capital of one hmidred thousand 
dollars of seventv-two thousand shares, with offices in Bos- 
ton, Philadelphia, Washington, Cincinnati, and London, 
England. At the meeting of the stockholders of the Amer- 
ican Bank Note Company, in New York, on January 31, 
1879, sanctioning and a])])roving the consolidation, Tracy 
R. Edson represented six hundred and seven shares; Susan 
M. Edson, fift}^ and Mary A. Edson, fifty. The different 
certificates were collectively filed in the office of the Secre- 
tary of State, at Albany, on September 4, 1883. 

Tracy Robinson Edson 's connection with the Gold and 
Stock Telegraph Company added noted efficiency and dis- 
tinct financial advantages to its operations. The company 
was incorporated on August 16, 1867, with a capital of two 
hundred thousand dollars. In the following year a number 
of new stockholders increased its capital to five hundred 
thousand dollars. Shortly thereafter, Tracy Robinson 
Edson became one of its largest stockholders. "He," as 
said by a well-informed writer, ''soon began to take an 
active personal interest in its management, was elected a 
director in 1869, ^^^ has ever since been a member of its 
executive committee. With mtich natural tact and per- 
sistence, Mr. Edson gave to the devel()])rnent of the com- 
pany much of his thought and time, and greatl\- ai(kMl the 
popular and politic administration of its affairs. It was 
largely through his agency that, soon after his election, the 
company secured the property and franchises of S. S. Laws, 
LL.D. (August 27, 1869), and entered into a large and popu- 
lar development of the business. Mr. Edson also initiated 
the movement by which the contract made with the Western 
Union Telegraph Com])any, through which the business 
of the Gold and Stock Tclcgra])h Com])any ac(|uircd its pres- 
ent [1878] national proportions, was finalh' eilccted. . . . 



o 



66 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



" Mr. Tracy R. Edson, whose exceptionally large interest 
in the capital of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company made 
him especially watchful of its affairs, soon perceived the dan- 
ger to which success under a vigorous and discreet adminis- 
tration had brought his company. It became evident to him, 
also, that any enlargement of its business by its extension 
to other cities would have to be accomplished through one 
of the leading telegraph companies. He therefore, after 
much careful thought, proposed a plan of co-operative 
union with the Western Union Telegraph Company by 
which the mutual interests of both would be conserved. 
General Marshall Lefferts, quickly perceiving its import- 
ance, urged on Mr. Edson the task of attempting its ac- 
complishment. Mr. James H. Banker, then vice-president 
of the Bank of New York, and at that time one of the most 
energetic and influential of the executive committee of the 
Western Union Telegraph Company, cordially offered his 
co-operation, and the project was promptly presented to 
the officers of that company. 

" Fortunately, circumstances at that time connected 
with the Western Union Telegraph Company favored the 
proposal. Its posit'on as a company was powerful and 
commanding, but the necessary aggressiveness of its move- 
ments in the consolidation of its vast property and interests 
had naturally roused against it many vigilant enemies. 
These had seized upon the business conducted through the 
Commercial News Department as evidence of a design on 
the part of the Western Union Telegraph Company, to 
traffic on the knowledge of the changes in the markets of the 
world to the danger and detriment of general commerce. 
Under the administration of some men such a scheme was 
apparently possible. This possibility gave plausibility and 
a kind of dignity to denunciation. The field of operation 
seemed fruitful and vast, and diatribes on monopoly were 
many and eloquent. The Western Union Company, con- 
scious of the impossibility of any company being able sue- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 367 

cessfully to violate in any such way a great ])iil)lic trust, and 
satisfied that time would \' indicate the uprightness of its 
general policy, nevertheless perceived the advantage of 
separating that department from their ordinary business 
and placing it under the special direction of a se])arate or- 
ganization. The proposition, therefore, was made to the 
Gold and Stock Telegra])h Compan\' to turn ox'cr to it the 
entire Commercial News Service, valuable facilities of 
intercourse with all ]:)arts of the continent, the Phel])s' ma- 
chinery, and other important advantages, upon an agree- 
ment to issue to the Western Union Telegra])h Compan\' an 
amount of stock then corresponding to the capital of the 
Gold and Stock Company. This was soon after done, and 
became the basis of a contract executed May 25, 1871, by 
which the capital became $2,500,000. General Marshall 
Lefferts was retained as president, and William Orton, 
Horace F. Clark, James H. Banker, and Tracy R. Edson 
became its executive committee. The operations of the 
company became at once world-wide, and systems of finan- 
cial, produce, cotton, and other market quotations were 
added to its general and metropolitan business." ' 

Thomas Alva Edison, the distinguished electrician and 
inventor, then unknown to fame, came, in 1871, at the age 
of twenty-four years, from Boston to New \'ork Citw and 
soon afterward became the superintendent of the Gold and 
Stock Telegraph Company, having invented the ]>rinling 
telegraphic instrument for the registration of gold and 
stock quotations. For the manufacture of this valuable 
piece of mechanism he established a largc> i^lanl at Newark. 
N. J., where other of his serviceable inwMUions were manu- 
factured until 1876, when he occu])ied liis nt>w estabhsli- 
ment at Menlo Park, New Jersey. Trac\' Robinson Edson 
soon became greatly interested in tlie notabk^ skill and 
practical ingenuity of the young inventor, and fortliwiih 

* The Telefiraph in Aiiicn'cu. /Is /''inDhicrs, I'roDiolcrs. and .\\>lcJ Mm. By 
James 1). Rrid. New York, 1S79. Pp. O07, 60S, 612, 013. 



368 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

largely invested his funds in the manufacture of the gold 
and stock- quotation printing instruments, as later he did 
in the stock of the Edison Telephone Company and that of 
the Edison Electric Light Company. 

He also became financially interested in the manufac- 
ture of zylonite, more generally known in the United States 
as celluloid, the discovery of Daniel Spill of England, a 
hard, durable, and plastic substance, composed of soluble 
gun-cotton, gum camphor, alcohol, and other ingredients 
as pigments, and closely resembling ivory. Made as it was 
in different colors, in imitation of the various hues of 
tortoise-shells, coral, amber, malachite, and other attractive 
substances, it was extensively used in the manufacture of 
numberless useful and ornamental articles. 

In all his business ventures, Tracy Robinson Edson was 
richly repaid for his judicious and large investments, and 
was recognized by all his compeers as an able and powerful 
financier, and as such was a leader in each of the enter- 
prises with which he was connected. For many years im- 
mediately prior to his death he was treasurer of Grace 
Protestant Episcopal Church on Broadway, between Tenth 
and Eleventh streets. 

He began residing in the city of New York in 1834, in 
the house then known as No. 17 Beach Street, which he 
owned later and occupied until 1854, when he purchased 
the one designated as No. 16 East 17th Street, where he 
continued to live, his widowed mother and two sisters with 
him, until his decease. He never married, nor did either 
of his sisters, nor his brother, Clement Massillon, whose 
second title was baptismally bestowed in honor of the em- 
inent French pulpit orator, Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663- 
1742). His affection for his mother, two sisters, and 
brother, Marmont Bryan Edson, was unusually developed, 
and, as disclosed by his last will and testament, his sur- 
viving sisters and brother, together with his nephew, Jarvis 
Bonesteel Edson, and his neice, Fanny Fairchild Edson, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 369 

were made the sole heirs of his great wealth as represented 
by real estate, stocks, and funds. 

As set forth in his last will and testament, made in the 
city of New York, on July 8, 1875, his bequests, wishes, and 
appointments were the following : 

" I. My house and lot No. 16 East Seventeenth Street, 
my pew No. 44, in Grace Church, New York, and my lot of 
twelve and three-fourth acres of land, in Cornwall, Orange 
County, New York, I wish sold by my executors, and after 
pa}dng my just debts, funeral expenses, and the expenses 
of executing this trust, and the special bequests, together 
with the proceeds of my life insurance, are to be divided 
equally between my dear brother, Marmont B. Edson, and 
m)^ dear sisters, Mary A. and Susan M. Edson, or the sur- 
vivor or survivors of them, share and share alike. The 
notes of Marmont B. Edson are to be cancelled and not 
taken into account. 

" 3. vShould I die possessed of any l}onds or other securi- 
ties of the United States, or of any state, or any railroad or 
other company, or of any city, or of stock in the American 
Bank Note Company, the Gold and Stock Telegraph Com- 
pany, the Celluloid Manufacturing Company, the Saint 
Nicholas Fiank, the Bank of the Metropolis, the Mercantile 
Trust Company, the Equitable Trust Com])any, the Mutual 
Gas Liglit Company, the Provident Savings Life Insurance 
Company, or any other stock, I wish the same to be divided 
equally as near as may be, share and share alike between my 
brother Marmont and my sisters, Mary A. and Susan M. 
Edson, or the survivor or survivors of them. 

" 5. My lot in the village of Cooperstown, I give and 
bequeath to Mary A. and Susan M. Edson jointly. My 
seven hundred and eleven, and twenty-six one-hundredths, 
acres wild land in Arkansas, and my lot, 55 eastern addition 
to the city of Pontiac, Michigan, I hereby give and bequeath 
to my dear ne])hew, Jarvis B. Edson. 

"6. My lot No. 12,010, in Greenwood Cemeter>', I 

«4 



370 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

hereby give and bequeath to my brother Marmont B. Ed- 
son, to be used as a burying place for all the members of our 
family. 

"7. I own an undivided one-half interest in the Euro- 
pean patents for Edson's Recording Steam Gauge, for 
which I paid Marmont B. Edson one thousand and sixty- 
six, and sixty-seven one-hundredths, dollars, such portion 
of which as will amount to one third interest in the whole, I 
hereby give and bequeath to my nephew, Jarvis B. Edson, 
and the remainder of the said one-half interest, I give and 
bequeath to my brother Marmont B. Edson. 

"8. I hereby give and bequeath to my nephew, Jarvis 
B. Edson, the sum of two thousand dollars, and to my niece, 
Fanny F. Edson, one thousand dollars, the same to be paid 
out of the proceeds of my house and lot No. 16 East Seven- 
teenth vStreet, New York, my pew, No. 44, in Grace Church, 
my lot of land at Cornwall, and my life insurance, as pro- 
vided in article the first of this will. 

"9. I wish any balance that may be due me at my de- 
cease at Messrs. Vermilye & Co.'s, the Saint Nicholas Bank, 
the Bank of the Metropolis, or elsewhere, to be drawn out 
by my executors immediately and paid over in equal por- 
tions to my brother, Marmont B. and my sisters, Mary A. 
and Susan M. Edson, or to the survivor, or survivors of 
them. 

"10. My clothing, and my office-desk at the Gold and 
Stock Telegraph Company's office, I give and bequeath to 
my brother, Marmont B. Edson, and my furniture, piano, 
pictures, and books, contained in the house. No. 16 East 
Seventeenth Street, I give and bequeath to my sisters, 
Mary A. and Susan M. Edson. . . . My office-desk at 
the American Bank Note Company's office, I give and be- 
queath to my nephew, Jarvis B. Edson. 

"12. I hereby appoint my friend, John E. Parsons Esq., 
and my sister, Mary A. Edson, my executors. 

"13. In case of default or failure to serve of the first of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 371 

my executors above named, T hereby appoint my friend 

and relative, Hiram F. Hatch, Esq., to act in his stead, and 

in default or failure to serve of my sister Mary A. Edson, I 

hereby appoint my sister, Miss Susan M. Edson, to act in 

her stead." 

" Tracy R. Edsox. 

" In the presence of Theo. H. Freeland, Orange Junc- 
tion, New Jersey," and " George C. Brown, 97 Henry Street, 
Brooklyn." Proved on December 9, 1881. 

On Wednesday, November 30, 1881, the following an- 
nouncement, under the heading of " Deaths," was made in 
the New York Daily Tribune: 

"Edson. On Tuesday, November 29, Tracy R. Edson, 
in the 7 2d year of his age. 

" His friends and those of the family are respectfully in- 
vited to attend the funeral from his late residence, No. 16 
East 17th St., Friday morning. December 2, at 10 o'clock." 

In one of the columns of the same journal, issued the 
same day, the following obituary appeared: 

"Tracy R. Edson, who died yesterday at his home. No. 
16 East Seventeenth-st., was one of the old business men of 
New York, and at one time one of the most prominent en- 
gravers in this city. He was born at Fly Creek, near 
Cooperstown, Otsego County, in 1809. He came to New 
York about fifty years ago, and established himself in the 
business of an engraver, forming one of the old firm of 
Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, & Edson, the predecessor of the 
American Bank Note Company, of which also Mr. Edson was 
one of the founders and the second president. Mr. Edson 
continued his connection for many years with the com]')any 
which began business in the u])per part of the Custom 
House building. Of late he had been connected with sev- 
eral business concerns of this city. He was always con- 
sidered an upright and accurate business man, quiet and 
unpretending in his manners. He was never married. The 
burial will be at Greenwood." 



372 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Marmont Bryan Edson, the youngest son of William 
Jarvis and Polly (Fairchild) Edson, began his business ex- 
perience in the city of New York, in the spring of 1836, 
when, at the age of twenty-three years, he entered the em- 
ployment of Rush ton & Aspinwall, druggists, no Broad- 
way, and the corner of Barclay Street, to acquire a 
practical knowledge of the drug business. After applying 
himself for two years in gaining as much as would qualify 
him to engage in it, and having heard that the proprietor 
of a drug-store in the village of Oswego, in Oswego County, 
N. Y., would sell his stock and good- will, he went thither and 
purchased, as he subsequently advertised, the stock con- 
tained in the building (now 182 West First Street), which he 
had rented : 

" Drugs and Medicines, Paints, Oils, and Dye-Stuffs. 

" The subscriber having purchased the stock in trade of 
Mr. R. L. Lawrence, is now in receipt of an additional sup- 
ply of select goods in his line of business, and respectfully 
invites the attention of old customers, as well as others who 
desire choice articles. Physicians and Country Dealers will 
at all times be supplied at the lowest wholesale prices. 

" Painters can now be furnished with Saugerties White 
Lead, Spirits of Turpentine, Linseed Oil, and Paints of 
every description, and of superior quality. 

" Choice Port and other Wines for medical purposes. 

"Marmont B. Edson. 

" Oswego, July 18, 1838." 

In the same newspaper in which he had advertised his 
business, the Osivego Commercial Herald, he inserted, on 
August I, 1839, the following notice: "To the Travelling 
Public. The subscriber. Agent for the Roxbury India 
Rubber Company — has just received a full assortment of 
Waterproof Over-Shoes, Over-Coats, and Life Preservers, 
of first quality; and respectfully invites the attention of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 373 

Citizens, Sailors, and Travellers to the same — in which they 
will find confidence may be ])laced during the a])])roaching 
inclement season. 

"For sale, wholesale or retail, by Marmont B. Edson, 
First Street, West Oswego." 

His enterprise and diligence in business have the certi- 
fication of the conspicuous and various advertisements 
which are contained in the principal newspapers of Oswego, 
bearing his name and describing the character and qualities 
of the drugs, medicines, paints, and other merchandise sold 
by him. He at once became interested in the affairs of the 
place, and not infrequently attended public meetings to 
further its industrial and commercial interests. Aware of 
the benefits of having the people realize the value of a high 
standard of intelligent and compensatory farming in the 
country, he and other enterprising citizens and farmers took 
an active part in the organization of the Oswego County 
Agricultural Society, the first meeting for which was held 
on February i, 1840. 

Realizing that his business venture in Oswego was in 
several ways incommensurate with his ex]iectations, he 
disposed of his stock and good- will on the first of December, 
1840, as is definitely disclosed by the following advertise- 
ment found in the Osivcgo Palladium, of Wednesday, De- 
cember 9th, that year: 

" Drugs and Grockries. 

"The subscriber, having ])urchased the entire stock in 

trade of Mr. M. B. Edson, now offers for sale, at his store, in 

First Street, West Oswego, a large assortment of Drugs & 

Medicines, Paints, Oils, Groceries, and Fancy Articles, &c. 

"Darwin Canfield. 
"West Oswego, Dec. i, 1840." 

"Card. — I have this day disposed of m\' entire stock in 
trade to Mr. Darwin Canfield, who will continue the business 



374 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

in all its branches at the store lately occupied by me, to 
whom I cheerfully recommend my former customers and all 
who wish to purchase, assuring them that no exertion will 
be spared by Mr. Canfield to please even the most fastidious. 
" Thankful for the real patronage which has been ex- 
tended to me, I now respectfully request those who are in- 
debted, for an immediate settlement, and those who have 
any demands, to present the same immediately. 

" Marmont B. Edson, 
■ West Oswego, Dec. i, 1840." 

Rochester, on the Genesee River, having a population 
of about twenty thousand souls, founded in 181 2, was 
rapidly growing to be an important centre of manufacture 
and commerce, and there, in the spring of 1841, Marmont 
B. Edson rented and fitted up a drug-store, on State Street, 
the third thoroughfare west of the river. On entering into 
business in Rochester, he made the following announcement 
in the Rochester Daily Democrat: 

"State Street Drug Store!!! 

■'The subscriber has the pleasure of informing the 
citizens of this city and of Western New York, that he 
has opened the store. No. 30 State Street, for the sale of 
Drugs and Chemicals, Paints and Oils, Dye Woods, Fancy 
articles, &c. 

" His stock, which is entirely new, was selected with 
great care and purchased at the lowest New York prices; 
he is therefore enabled to sell upon such terms as will please 
all who may favor him with their patronage. 

" Druggists and Physicians will be supplied at the lowest 
wholesale prices, with pure articles; and all are respectfully 
invited to call and examine his stock before purchasing 
elsewhere. 

"M. B. Edson. 
" 30 State Street, next door to City Bank. 
"Rochester, July i, 1841." 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 375 

Having no use for all the buildings on the lot on which 
his drug and chemical store was standing, he, early in the 
fall of that year, advertised as follows : 

"To Rent. The two-story stone building in the rear of 
store No. 30 State Street. It is suitable for a dwelling for a 
small family, but will be rented for a worksho]) if desired. 
It will be rented low and possession given immediately. 

" M. B. Edson, 30 State Street. 
"Sept. 16." 

While in business in Oswego, Marmont B. Edson made 
the acquaintance of Margaret Barbara, the daughter of 
Jacob Nicholas Bonesteel, a i)rominent dry-goods mer- 
chant, and they became engaged, he being twenty-eight 
years of age and she twenty- two. The announcement of 
their marriage, as made in the Oswego Palladium, of 
Wednesdav, October 13, 1841, following one on the seventh 
of October, reads: 

" In this village, on the same day, by the Rev. Mr. Mc- 
Carty, Mr. Marmont B. Edson, of Rochester, to Miss Mar- 
garet Barbara, daughter of J. N. Bonesteel, Esq., of this 
village." 

Marmont Bryan Edson, eager to reap all the advan- 
tages of business in Rochester that were there to be ac( {uired 
by him, formed, shortly after his marriage, a jKirtncrshi]) 
with H. J. Perrin, the firm thereupon taking the name of 
M. B. Edson & Company, druggists, 30 State Street. In 
A|)ril, 1842, the firm opened a second store in a building 
known as 22 Buffalo vStreet, to which, in June, tlial \'ear, 
the stock of drugs and kindred merchandise in the State 
Street building were moved. Discovering that he could 
more satisfactorily and ])rofitably conihu't the business by 
himself, he communicated to his father his need of mone\- 
should he conclude to terminate tlie ])artnershi]). The 
answer returned liini is a ])alernal exiu-ession ot altection 
and timely admonition. The lustre of the father's low for 



376 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

his children, not only exhibited in this instance but on 
many other occasions, had a sustained splendor in its mani- 
festation more noticeable than that of any other natural 
gift or personal attainment marking his engaging person- 
ality. His solicitude for his youngest son's welfare, whose 
wedded life was then an appreciable factor of consideration, 
is discernibly implied but not in wordy declaration; the 
financial aid so generously extended him was the motive of 
a painstaking care to advantage his son judiciously; the 
advice tendered him concerning prudence and circumspec- 
tion was the best fruitage of the father's business experience 
and knowledge. 

" New York, gth May, 1842. 

" Dear Marmont: 

" I shall be able to let you have seven or eight hundred 
dollars, possibly a little more — if absolutely necessary. O. 
C. will not, I fear, pay more, and that has been obtained by 
force of law, that is, by compelling him to allow his rents to 
be paid over to me. 

" I have had hopes of getting much more, but I now 
think the prospect is not in favor of it. The most of the 
above is collected, and you can therefore make your ar- 
rangements accordingly. I felt sure of being able to give 
you some assistance for a time, and therefore did not think 
it best to call on Tracy. His business is by no means as 
good as it has been formerly in New Orleans. 

" The times are exceeding hard [following the panic of 
1837], and the most rigid economy is required from all pru- 
dent men, and women too, who intend to avoid the morti- 
fication of coming down. Habits of extravagance and the 
indulgence of luxury must be given up, and those who will 
not do so will fail to pay — therefore mind to whom you give 
credit. Common sense will probably come in fashion again 
shortly — and the industrious and the prudent, steady -going 
business men will have all the business to do. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 377 

" We are all in good health through the continued good- 
ness of God, and pray for your welfare and that of your dear 
wife. We are expecting you now daily. 

"Your Father, 

"William J. Edson." 

In the summer of 1842, Marmont B. Edson, deeming it to 
his advantage to dispose of his property in Rochester, sold 
it, and, in the spring of 1843, established himself as a drug- 
gist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Territory, on thj west shore 
of Lake Michigan, eighty miles north of Chicago. For a 
number of years prior to 1835, the site of the rapidly grow- 
ing village "was known only as an Indian trading-post, 
occupied by a Frenchman named Solomon Juneau, who is 
generally spoken of as the founder of the city." In 1838, 
its inhabitants numbered seven hundred; in 1840, one 
thousand seven hundred and twelve; and, in 1846, nine 
thousand six hundred and sixty-six. 

Tracy R. Edson, when returning to New York from New 
Orleans, in July, 1843, by the wa}^ of Saint Louis, visited 
Milwaukee, where he had the ])leasure of seeing for the first 
time his sister-in-law, Margaret Barbara (Bonesteel) Edson. 

The prevalence of fever and ague in and about Mil- 
waukee highly popularized a medicine for the cure of it, 
prepared by Marmont B. Edson. Its efficacy in alleviating 
the sufferings of the afflicted people, of whom Solomon 
Juneau was one, to whose memory a monument has been 
erected on the lake front of the city, caused the grateful 
Frenchman to place in the hands of his friend the following 
testimonial, in order to have the value of the medicine 
known to those having the malarial malad\': 

" Mr. Marmont B. Edson, 
"Sir: 
" Having witnessed the efficiency of your Com])ound 
Vegetable Remedy for Agtie and Fever, and belie\'ing it 



378 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

worthy of all praise as a cure for that disease, I unhesitat- 
ingly recommend it to the patronage of the public. 

" I remain, 

"Yours, &c., 

"S. Juneau. 
" March i6, 1844." 

Under the date of May 17, 1844, William Jarvis Edson, 
writing to his son, Marmont Bryan, from New York City, 
prefatorily remarks: 

" As an opportunity presents I devote a few moments to 
write to you. I have nothing of much consec[uence to say 
except that we are all in health but Clement, who has some 
affection of the neck or throat that has been troublesome to 
him for a few days, nothing however of a serious nature, we 
presume. 

" I do hope you will make your medicine go, although I 
cannot say that I wish anybody to have the fever and ague. 
No — but if they do have it, I hope they will buy your drops 
and be cured and recommend them to others, both as a pre- 
ventative and a cure. 

"It is with great pleasure we read your letters. I am 
glad to see that you preserve your cheerfulness. As the 
world did not conclude to burn at Father Miller's bidding, I 
learn that Eugene Dibble [probably a believer in the predic- 
tions of the terrestrial catastrophe that was to occur in 
1843,] has opened a shop somewhere on Greenwich Street. 
Old Trinity is slowly rearing her lofty spire. . . . 
May God preserve and bless you both." 

The mention of the unfulfilment of Father William 
Miller's prophetic declarations, no doubt recalled very 
vividly to the remembrance of the son and the daughter-in- 
law the widely published predictions of the second coming 
of Christ to the earth in 1843, ^^^ ^^^ consequent destruc- 
tion by fire of all things terrestrial, which caused a great 
number of men and women, who accepted the fanatic's as- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 379 

sertions as inerrant, to prepare themselves becoming robes 
in which to ascend to heaven, and to dispose of their prop- 
erty and to abandon their occupations in view of the im- 
] lending annihilation of all mundane objects, animate and 
inanimate, except those persons who were righteous and 
redeemed. The confidence of the disciples of Miller, or 
Miller ites, as they were familiarly styled by intelligent and 
disbelieving people, contagiously subjected not a few un- 
believers to startling fears and misgivings regarding their 
unpreparedness for the dire day. As it did not occur, the 
Millerites for many years thereafter were the victims of the 
criticism and burlesque of their less impetuous and imagi- 
native neighbors and acquaintances. 

Marmont B. Edson, discovering that Milwaukee did not 
afford him the advantages which he had been induced to 
believe it would, moved to Janesville, in Wisconsin Terri- 
tory, on the west bank of Rock River, sixty miles southwest 
of the first-named place. The village, which derived its 
name from Henry F. Janes, who settled on its site in the 
spring of 1836, and established a ferry opposite his log- 
cabin overlooking the river, became, in June, 1839, the seat 
of a store. In July, 1841, Janesville had germinated into 
a settlement of two stores, ten dwellings, two taverns, with 
seventy or eighty inhabitants. In December, 1843, thirty- 
six dwellings and three hundred and thirty-three settlers 
were then the evidence of its growth; and, in August. 1845, 
one hundred and fifty-seven dwellino-s and eight hundred 
and fifty-five inhabitants distinguished it. 

There, on the thirtieth of A])ril, 1845, Jarvis Bcmesteel, 
the first child of Marmont Bryan and Margaret Barl)ara 
(Bonesteel) Edson, was born. 

The proud father and hap])y mother liad their son 
shortly thereafter christened by the Rev. Thomas J. Ruger, 
father of General Howard Ruger, U.S.A.. who had been 
sent from the diocese of New York to that part of Wisconsin 
Territory, in the summer of 1844, l)y the Domestic Board of 



38o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church. On the 
eighteenth of September, that year, this active missionary 
organized the first congregation of Trinity Episcopal 
Church of Janesville, when, on that day, two wardens and 
eight vestrymen were elected to take charge of its affairs. 
From the beginning of his missionary work in Janesville 
and its vicinity until the first of January, 1846, the Rev. 
Thomas J. Ruger conducted services in a small brick school- 
house. At the end of two years, a parish was fully or- 
ganized, of which he became rector, and retained that 
position until 1855. At a vestry meeting, held on July 5, 
1847, an affirmative vote authorized the immediate erec- 
tion of a brick house of worship seventy-two feet in length 
and forty-five in width. An attractive edifice of those 
dimensions was accordingly built, and in June, 1848, conse- 
crated. This monument of Christian effort and generosity 
is still an architectural ornament of the place. Until its 
consecration, the congregation worshipped in the stone 
building styled the Janesville Academy. In projecting the 
erection and furthering the completion of the church, Mar- 
mont B. Edson took an active and prominent part, and 
was a generous contributor to liquidate the debt of three 
thousand dollars, the cost of the building. 

During the ten years of his business career in Janesville 
as a wholesale and retail dealer in drugs and chemicals, 
Marmont B. Edson was highly successful. A second son, 
Henry Augustus, and a daughter, Mary Gertrude, were 
born to him there, the son on the ninth of April, 1847, ^^^ 
daughter on the seventeenth of November, 1849. 

Meanwhile his father and mother had, in 1845, changed 
their residence from New York City to Utica, N. Y. Wil- 
liam Jarvis Edson, as a professor of music, soon acquired 
there no little local reputation as an instructor in vocaliza- 
tion and the principles of harmony. Prior to a public ex- 
hibition of the attainments of the members of one of his 
classes, he published a musical leaflet of twelve pages, en- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 381 

titled: Hymns and Songs to be Sung at Mr. Wm. J. Edson's 
Juvenile Concert, on Wednesday Evening, September 77, 1845. 
This publication he had entered for copyright, according to 
Act of Congress, in the year 1845, ii"i the Clerk's office of the 
District Court for the Northern District of New York. 
As a foot-note, the following announcement was made by 
him on a page of the leaflet: " Mr. Edson gives lessons in 
music to classes and private scholars at his room, 8 Der- 
creaux Block, Utica." 

This place of instruction was later changed to a more 
convenient building, as ]:»ublished in the Utica directorv for 
the year 1846, in which, and the directories for the two fol- 
lowing years, as a professor of music, he is named as having 
a room in the Devereux Block, 144 Genesee Street, and a 
residence at 88 Fayette Street. 

In a letter, dated "Utica, May loth, 1846," with the 
prefacing address, " Dear Marmont, Margarette, and little 
J. B. E. Esq." (his grandson being then a year old), he dis- 
cursively relates — ^his wife, "Ma," as mentioned l)y him, 
having, in another communication, ]:)articularized " all the 
domestic events " — some of the incidents of his ])rofes- 
sional engagements in Utica. interspersed with such obser- 
vations and comments concerning ] personal and public 
affairs as then came within the range of his thoughts and 
were regarded by him as worthv of communication: 

" I am now engaged in the city schools, that is, eight of 
them, giving one lesson ]^er week in each, at fifty cents a 
lesson. I have just commenced an engagement for six 
months in the First Presbyterian Church as leader and in- 
structor for one hundred dollars. I ha\'e just closed a term 
in the same church from which I realized about sixt}'-fi\'e 
dollars for, say, four months by wa\" of a concert, given on 
the twenty-second of April, by which I gained mucli repu- 
tation [in Utica] as a teacher and leader of sacred music, 
my ])revious efforts here having been confined to ju\'enile 
singing, for I had not been able to effect much with the old 



382 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

class. The concert was really a good one. The selections 
were of the highest order. I have some classes and private 
pupils, but I do not design to continue here very long, as 
the labor is very hard, and it does not pay. 

" What I shall do with my Improved Notations, I cannot 
now say. I have full confidence in the plan, and shall en- 
deavor to do something with it in the course of the summer. 

" An acquaintance of mine, Mr. H -, called on me on 

his return from New York. He is a very clever fellow as 
you have found out. Be very cautious in your business 
transactions with him, that you may not change your 
mind. He has always been very friendly, yet I would have 
you be cautious. 

" I wish very much to see you all. I do not forget you 
when I supplicate the Divine favor, but pray that you may 
be encircled in the arms of the Almighty, and at such mo- 
ments you seem to be near, and distance is lost in spiritual 
communion. And such is the state undoubtedly to which 
we are hastening, when presence will keep company with 
thought, and spirit will not be encumbered by time or space. 

" Sometimes I have thought of proposing a connexion in 
business as I do not feel inclined to go to farming. The 
capital I could command would perhaps help you, and the 
business might afford a living, but then should I go West, or 
you come East? Aye, that 's a poser — may be I could not 
get any company to go West — may be you had better stay 
where you are — -may be I had better not have mentioned 
the thing — may be you will write pretty soon, and say what 
you please about it — may be you will tell me all about your 
feelings, thoughts, wishes, prospects; whether you would 
like me to come out there and look at the country, and 
whether you would stay there if you could get away, or not. 
But I am old and cannot stay anywhere but a few years at 
most, though there are others who are young and might do 
well in going. I should like to hear what you have to say 
about these things. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 383 

" I do not think I ever wrote such a kind of letter as this 
before, but I do not think I shall alter it now. I do not 
think you will show this to anybody else, if you do to 
Margarette. 

" By the way you cover a good deal of pa])er with your 
advertisements — ^hope the printer wants a good many 
' ague drops, ' and such like. 

" Seriously, I want you to write a long, particular-meter 
letter, concerning the various matters floodishly men- 
tioned herein. I wish very much to know what you would 
do if you could. Here I will stop, for I cannot make out a 
sentence worthy to be written except it be this last one. 

" Affectionately 

" Your father. 

"W. J. Edsox." 

There is a remarkable impulse of paternal feeling dis- 
cernible in this communication, particularly in those com- 
plex expressions veiling an ungovernable yearning to be 
with Marmont Bryan, his youngest son, in the years of 
declining life ; the father having reached the advanced age 
of threescore years. When he lifted his soul heavenward 
in supplication and felt the inspiration of a divine presence 
giving guidance to his far-away son, there seemed to him to 
be no mete or bound to limit the sacred influence of thought 
and prayer. Without being expressed, there is manifestly 
a heart-cherished wish enshrined in the wording of the letter 
to have some agency bring the writer of it and his grandson, 
the "esquire" of his deeply seated affection, face to face, 
perhaps to leave the memory with him of having seen his 
grandfather before his decease. 

In the fall of 1847. William Jarvis Edson began to be 
afflicted with rheumatic pains in the muscles of his throat 
and neck, from which point of time until his death he 
gradually became unfitted for the performance of his pro- 
fessional services. His son Marmont was about changing 



384 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the place of his residence in Janesville, and his sister Mary 
Augusta was actively assisting her sister-in-law in preparing 
the new home for occupation by the household. 

Writing from Utica, on January 23, 1848, he styles its 
members collectively as " Dear Children (for " [as he adds 
in a parenthetical clause], "I address you all), Marmont, 
Margarette, Mary, and the young birds" — his grandsons, 
Jarvis Bonesteel and Henry Augustus, then individually in 
their third and first years. 

" We have been waiting and hoping for a letter for many 
weeks from Mary, but none has reached us except a few 
lines written to Tracy by M. from Milwaukee. That com- 
munication has relieved the great anxiety which we could 
not but feel in not hearing from any of you for so long a 
time, and I feel grateful to the Giver of all good that your 
health and lives are spared and that another year has 
begun its course with all the members of our family in 
health except myself, and I am now rather better than 
when Mary left home. 

"As to my own health I am troubled with a laborious 
respiration, which is aggravated if not caused by a rheu- 
matic affection of the respiratory muscles. My right 
shoulder is also considerably affected, but on the whole, as 
I have said above, nature is, I think, getting the better of 
both. . . . 

" I rejoice to hear that Marmont has succeeded so well 
in business, yet I cannot kwite excuse him for his neglect 
in writing so seldom. But what shall I say to Mary? Oh! 
how many inquiries have been made at the post-office! 
Well ! I hope we shall get a letter before this reaches you ! 

" We hear from New York pretty often, and sometimes 
see a friend from there. One arrived here last evening, 
and is ' staying over Sabbath. ' . . . 

"What next? Oh! the weather! Well, we have as 
good as no sleighing at all this winter— very mild weather, 
for this climate, most of the time, but some extreme cold 




WILLIAM JARVIS EDSON 



385 



386 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

days. To-day the sun awoke with a bright shining face, 
which he has kept on until this hour, three o'clock, p.m., 
when some untoward occurrence has dashed his setting 
prospects, and he has retired gloomily behind a wintry 
cloud. 

"Next! about the new house! New carpets! New 
everything! Well, if Mary is with you, she knows how it's 
done and can do it; but you must move kwick. May you 
enjoy the conveniences, and find happiness in your new 
home! 

"As you are all in such an overflow of business I must 

not detain you longer except to wish you health and every 

earthly enjoyment, commending you to the kind care of 

a protecting Providence. 

" Affectionately, 

" Your father, 

"William J. Edson. 
" Marmont B. Edson, Esq., 
& family. 

" P. S. It is a beautiful day, (24th). Mr. Harding is to 
be married this evening at Dr. Blakley's. We have an in- 
vitation. I do not know whether we shall stay here longer 
than till spring or not." 

The character of the contents of this letter presents the 
assertive nature of the affectionate father's solicitude for 
the health and welfare of the Janesville household, as well as 
the spontaneity of his gratitude to God for the knowledge 
afforded him of the well-being of its members after many 
days of anxious expectation. The desire of having them 
believe that he was less a sufferer than they might have 
reason to assume strikingly discloses his care to have them 
undisturbed by the mention he makes of his want of health. 
His laconic exclamations regarding the furnishings of the 
new home were flashes of an innate spirit of cheerfulness 
that lastingly illumined his disposition. Realizing as he 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 387 

always did that God is ever a gracious benefactor, he con- 
formably endeavored to impress from time to time his faith 
in an all- wise and bounteous Providence upon the minds of 
his children. 

Aware that his ill-health as time passed was certainly 
bringing his life on earth near its end, he made his last will 
and testament in the following form: 

" I, William J. Edson, of the city of Utica, county of 
Oneida, and state of New York, while in the enjoyment of 
a sound mind and considering the uncertainty of this mortal 
life do make and publish this my Last Will and Testament 
respecting the management of certain affairs and the dispo- 
sition of certain property after my decease. 

" First. I entrust to my two sons, Tracy R. Edson and 
Clement M. Edson, the entire direction and control of all 
property and matters of business which would otherwise 
of right belong to myself, and I hereby constitute and a])- 
point them my Executors and Trustees for that ])urpose. 

" Second. It is my desire that the sum of Two Thou- 
sand Dollars, now in the hands of James Humphrey, Esq., 
of the city of New York, remain as now invested and se- 
cured until circumstances render it necessary and proper 
otherwise to dispose of it. 

" Third. In the final division of my property and es- 
tate, I desire that the sum of Five Hundred Dollars for each 
of my two daughters, Mary Augusta Edson and Susan 
Maria Edson, be appro])riated to their sole and separate use 
and benefit, and that the sum of Ten Hundred Dollars, or 
the interest thereof, be ap]^ropriated to the use and main- 
tenance and support of my beloved wife, Polly Edson, dur- 
ing her natural life, and if any part of said last-mentioned 
sum should remain after her decease that it be disposed of 
in the way first above-named as circumstances may then 
justify. 

" Fourth. I advise and direct that the lands owned by 
me in the state of Michigan, or elsewhere, and all of them be 



388 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

placed at the disposal of my two sons above named, to be 
sold or retained as to them shall seem best, having regard 
to the rights and interests of all my family and my feelings 
of love and affection for every member thereof, appending 
here this remark that the only reason for the omission of 
the name of my son, Marmont B. Edson, is, that he is sup- 
posed neither to require nor to desire any further pecuniary 
aid or testimony of my affection, and I hereby relinquish 
and give up all legal claims against him for advances here- 
tofore made or indebtedness incurred. 

" Finally, I commit my soul to God in humble depend- 
ence on his mercy through the merits of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen. 

" In Testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand 
and seal at the city of Utica, the fourth day of September in 
the year one thousand Eight Hundred and Forty-Eight. 

" William J. Edson, L.S. 

" The above instrument, consisting of one sheet, was this 

4th day of September, 1848, signed and sealed by the said 

Testator, William J. Edson, in our presence, and was by him 

then declared and acknowledged to be his Last Will and 

Testament, and we, at his request, and in his presence, and 

in the ])resence of each other affix our names hereunto as 

witnesses thereof. 

"William D. Hamlin, Utica. V 

"George A. Kelsey, Utica.') 
" Probated July 8, 1850." 

Twenty-seven days later, the soul of William Jarvis 
Edson passed from earth brightened with the hope of a fit- 
ness for other manifestations of God's love toward him in the 
endless ages of eternity. His death and the burial of his 
remains were announced on Tuesday morning, October 3, 
1848, as follows, in the Utica Daily Gazette: 

'^ History of Rock County, Wisconsin. Chicago, 1879. Pp. 532, 533, 556. 
557- — Book of Wills and Testaments, F, No. 9, pp. 310, 311, in the otBce of the 
Surrogate of Oneida County, New York, at Utica. 




MRS. WILLIAM JARVIS EDSON 



389 



390 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" Deaths: On the morning of the ist inst., Mr. WilUam 
J. Edson, aged 62 years and 8 months. 

" The funeral will take place from his late residence at 88 
Fayette St., on Tuesday, 3d inst., at 3 o'clock, P.M. The 
friends of the family are respectfully invited to attend." 

William Jarvis Edson, it may truly be said, had a nat- 
ural ordination to teach those who desired instruction in the 
art of using their vocal talents for the pleasure and cheer 
of themselves as well as of those about them. Confident 
that he was doing the will of his Creator, he had a serenity of 
mind and an abiding sense of duty that ever led him to meet 
bravely all the untoward exigencies of life common to men 
with a satisfying assurance that his harborage was always 
in a safe roadstead of God's decreeing. 

His widow resided in Utica until 1849, ^^'^^ thereafter in 
New York City, with her son, Tracy R. Edson, 16 East 
Seventeenth Street, until her decease, on December 24, 
1873, in the eighty-sixth year of her age. The funeral 
service was held at Grace Protestant Episcopal Church, on 
Broadway and Tenth Street. Her remains were en- 
tombed in the family burial plot, in Greenwood Cemetery, 
Brooklyn. 



Chapter XIII 
Marmont Bryan Edson 

1813-1892 

AHALF-century ago, the purpose of a person's "going 
West ' ' from a home east of the Alleghany Mountains 
was considered to be highly advantageous, as it was com- 
monly supposed at that time that almost any one ha\'ing 
health and sufficient money to meet the expenses of a 
journey to a destination in one of the several territories 
then open for settlement could soon launch himself upon a 
stream of prosperity on which he would, in a few years, reach 
a haven of rewarded labor and promised wealth iindisco\'er- 
able elsewhere in the United States of America. In the 
great exodus of \'oung men and newh^ married people that 
then formed a high tide of emigration from New England 
and the Middle States to the rich valleys and arable plains 
of the West, the greater number no doubt actualh' bettered 
their condition, not only financially but healthfull\'. and some 
of the more forward and ambitious speedil\^ acquired sub- 
stantial riches, either in the ownershi]) of extensive tracts 
of cultivated and productive land or in the proprietorshi]i 
of remunerative mills and manufactories. 

The new settlements of the Westeni frontier, regarded as 
remote from the Eastren States, were not, however, on the 
habitable bounds of the West for any great length of time. 
The attention and interest of the inhabitants of those 
distant i)()]3ulated •[)oints were soon awakened b\' the in- 
telligence that farther ])eyond them there were still more 

391 



392 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

attractive and wealth-yielding sections where riches were 
obtainable with less toil in fewer years of exacted thrift and 
industry. 

Not a few of those hardy pioneers of the far West, whose 
intelligence and energy had secured them rapid and increas- 
ing profits by the successful operations of their mills and 
factories, or by the advantageous sale of the abundant pro- 
ducts of their well-cultivated farms, or by fortunate mer- 
chandising in thriving centres of trade and industry, were 
unable to restrain themselves from selling their possessions, 
where they were amassing wealth and going to one or the 
other of the later places of settlement, in order to take ad- 
vantage of the lauded opportunities offered them for the 
quick acquirement of riches. 

The success which had attended Marmont B. Edson as a 
wholesale and retail druggist in Janesville, Rock County, 
Wisconsin Territory, did not repress a desire to change his 
business should he discover an opportunity to undertake 
another equally or more profitable that would release him 
from steady confinement indoors. Learning that in Green 
County, on the east bank of Sugar River, about twenty 
miles southwest of Janesville, there was purchasable an ex- 
cellent site for a flouring-mill, which, if built and operated, 
would be highly remunerative to the owner or owners, he 
formed a copartnership with John Brown to engage in the 
business of milling wheat and other grain in the adjoining 
county. 

The two sanguine and resolute capitalists moved thither 
with their families in 1851, having previously effected the 
purchase of the mill-property and the water-privilege apper- 
taining thereto. 

A part of the tract that formed the seat of the small 
settlement had been laid out, into building lots, in the spring 
of 1848 by William Jones, who erected on it a dwelling 
for his family and soon afterward a hotel to accommodate 
wayfaring pioneers and houseless settlers. He built a dam 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 393 

across Sugar River and partly finished the framework of a 
saw-mill that he had been building near it. 

In September, 1848, I. F. Mack came thither and ])ur- 
chased the squatter rights of Wilham Jones, and laid out 
eighty additional acres into house lots. 

In deference to the desire of William Jones the settle- 
ment was given, in 1852, the name of Decatur, by an act of 
the Legislature. Sugar River, flowing southwardly across 
Green County, was early known as the Sweet Water by the 
Indians fishing and trapping along it. 

Marmont B. Edson and his business associate, having 
obtained places of abode for their families, began the erec- 
tion of a flour-mill near the saw-mill which I. F. Mack had 
bought and ] nit into operation. As soon as they had comple- 
ted the building of the mill and the planting of the machinery 
and the construction of a flume from the vSugar River dam. 
thev were overburdened with orders for flourino: the orrain 
brought by the farmers of the surrounding countr_\'. The 
most trying of the experiences of the firm in operating the 
mill was the difficulty of obtaining parts of machiner}' t(^ sub- 
stitute for such as broke or could no longer be re] paired, thev 
having to wait sometimes for weeks before the new arrived 
from Milwaukee or from a more eastern ]3oint of sup|)ly. 
There were no lines of railway northwest of Chicago at that 
time, by which such material could l)c speedily trans])()rted 
to Decatur, the route of transportation thither being from 
Grand Haven, Michigan, across Lake Michigan to Milwau- 
kee, and thence westward 1)\' land, over unmacadamized 
roads on which hea\-il\' laden wagons could nio\e Iml slo\\i\- 
in the driest weather. Before Decatur had attained the 
dignity of a village, dressed himber for building ])urposes 
was l:)rought thither from Janesville. It is related that at 
that time a ])rejudice ])re\'ailed among its early inhabitants 
against the use of ])laned luml)er from janesville for the 
erection of a better and more attractive class of houses than 
had been built in Decatur; which bitter feeling had incited 



394 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

a displeased resident to set fire, secretly, to a quantity that 
had been hauled thither for that purpose. 

When Marmont B. Edson became a resident of the place 
it was exceedingly primitive in appearance, the few build- 
ings in it being mostly frame structures of no architec- 
tural attractiveness. The schoolhouse was a one-story log 
building, not more than twenty feet long and fifteen 
wide. Moved by his irrepressible spirit of enterprise, he 
erected a row of buildings in Decatur, with rooms on the 
first floors for stores, in which a large upper room was used 
for a number of years as a town-hall. It was in it that 
Horace Greeley, when on his way to the Pacific coast in the 
summer of 1859, delivered one of his abolition speeches, 
which, it is said, helped to elect Abraham Lincoln to the 
presidency of the United States of America. The ceiling 
of the hall was not more than eight feet above the floor, 
and when the stalwart advocate of abolition of African 
slavery in North America and in other countries where it 
existed spoke, at one end of the room, from a platform hav- 
ing an elevation of fifteen inches from the floor, his head 
was not far from the ceiling. The fumes and smoke of 
tobacco soon fouled the atmosphere and a drowsy languor 
began to dull the interest of the audience. Aware of the 
fact, the experienced and politic editor, in order to arouse 
the assembled frontiersmen to a more animated attention to 
his remarks, proposed the singing of the national hymn, the 
Star-Spangled Banner. As they were nowise more familiar 
with its words than they were with the tune, it became 
necessary for him to line off the verses one by one, after the 
manner of the Methodists, and to lead the singing, in order 
to accomplish his purpose. 

About the year 1853, wolves were numerous in that wild 
region of country, and their ferocity and depredations men- 
aced the lives and cattle of the settlers so greatly that the 
troubled pioneers appointed a day on which to assemble, 
armed and on horseback, to undertake the extermination 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 395 

of the aggressive and dangerous animals. Having met at 
the designated rendezvous, they formed into two hnes and 
deployed across the country at right angles the one line 
to the other, shooting and killing all the wolves that were 
found in the woods and thickets and elsewhere, in gun-shot 
distance, in the direction in which the mounted hunters rode 
that day. 

A third son, John Tracy, blessed the marriage of Mar- 
mont Bryan and Margaret Barbara (Bonesteel) Edson, on 
May 26, 1854. The presence of this their fourth child did 
not brighten long their home in Decatur, for on September 
4, 1855, its infantile life on earth terminated, to the great 
sorrow of the parents. 

The milling business of the two active flour manufac- 
turers in time became so burdensome by an excess of orders 
as to cause them an increasing perplexity to accommodate 
their numerous patrons, and finally brought the strong wills 
of the two strenuous and persistent men into such a state 
of friction, it is said, that they decided to dissolve 
the partnership and dispose of the property of the firm. 
They sold the flouring-mill, and likewise a saw-mill owned 
by them, to a member of the Mack family, who later con- 
veyed the flouring-mill to Thomas and John Hendrie, who, 
about the year 1863, having settled at Brodhead, a station 
on the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad, three and one- 
half miles from Decatur, and erected there the building 
known as the Brodhead City Mill, and su])]3lied it with 
water from the Sugar River dam, at Decatur, by a raceway 
sixty-five feet wide at the bottom, eighty at the to]). and 
eight deep, merged the business of the Decatur mill with 
that of the new one at Brodhead, and razed the old building. 

Marmont B. Edson, having heard of the extraordinary 
prospects of the budding village of Prairie du Chicn. about 
ninety-five miles northwest of Decatur, on the east bank of 
the Mississippi River, in Crawford Count)', Wisconsin, had 
his family and household goods carried from DecaUir in 



396 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

wagons, in the spring of 1856, to Prairie du Chien, where 
he engaged in the buying and selHng of real estate, based 
on the rapid growth of the place when the construction of 
the railroad, extending to it from Milwaukee, one hundred 
and ninety-eight miles distant, should be completed. 

Before any settlers occupied the site of the village, the 
Fox tribe of Indians, who were using it as a seat for their 
wigwams, had a chief, bearing the name of Dog, known 
vernacularly to the Canadian- French fur traders as Chien, 
whence that part of the plain came to be called Prairie du 
Chien. The charming character of the physical features of 
the place, made strikingly picturesque by lofty bluffs on 
each side of the river, at once engages the eye of an admirer 
of grand scenery. The sandy, loamy plain on which the 
city now stretches its numerous thoroughfares is about two 
miles wide at the south end and runs northward seven 
miles to a narrow extremitv. The homes of the inhabi- 
tants, who in 1857 numbered about three thousand, it is 
said, were then scattered over a space equivalent to seven 
sections of land. The growth and prospects of the village, 
as described by a local writer, that year, present in a sum- 
mary way some particulars relating to the place that may 
be regarded as historical: "We have one large steam 
flouring-mill, and one steam saw-mill ; we have three lumber 
yards, five brick-yards, and stone quarries without num- 
ber. Several millions of brick have been made and laid, 
during the present season, in [the erection of] dwellings 
and large stores and warehouses. . . . Three graceful 
churches, and one in the course of building, together with 
two other places of divine worship, honor the morals and 
religious tastes of the people. A high school and a suitable 
number of district schools supply the wants of our children 
and youths for educational purposes; and an academy and 
several more churches are in contemplation. . . . The 
railroad, at the time of this writing, is finished to a point 
twenty miles from this place, and the track is being laid at 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 397 

the rate of half a mile a day. . . . The ears are ex- 
pected to reach this village in February next. 

" During the past season the steamboat arrivals averaged 
ten or twelve a day, none of which boats were owned at this 
place. This village offers at this time the greatest facilities 
for wholesale dealers, for manufacturers, and for all kinds of 
mechanics and laborers. . . . Flouring, grist, and saw- 
mills are much needed, and a grist-mill, [run] 1)\- water- 
power, near the town, a good mill-wright and miller, would 
find good encouragement, from the ]3resent j)ros])ects." 
The first grist-mill was erected there in 1847. I^^ 1856, 
Alexander McGregor built and operated the first steam 
ferry-boat conveying passengers and vehicles across the 
river at that point. In 1857, the first saw-mill for convert- 
ing hard timber into ])lank was built near the site of the 
railroad round-house. On April 14, 1857, the first train of 
cars arrived at Prairie du Chien on the new line of railway 
eastward. 

The Rev. John H. Egar, a Protestant Episcopal mission- 
ary, organized, in June, 1857, a congregation of Episco- 
palians in Prairie du Chien, of which Marmont B. Edson 
and wife were zealous and influential members, and for the 
erection of the house of worship, begun that year, they 
were among the largest contributors of funds. The Rev. 
John H. Egar was elected rector of the ] parish and con- 
tinued to be until 1859. The vacancy in the rectorshi]) was 
not filled until 1863, when the Rev. Charles W. Clinton 
took charge of the parish. 

The two sons and datighter of Marmont Bryan and Mar- 
garet Barbara (Bonesteel) Edson — the elder son being in his 
fifteenth vear, and the daughter in her fifth affectionatelv 
welcomed, on A])ril 16, 1859, ^^^ advent of a sister, who, at 
her baptism, was given the name of f'anny Fairchild. The 
education of the two sons, that IkkI been begun in the log 
schoolhouse at Decatur, was continued at Prairie du C'hien, 
in a private school, conducted in a more modern building. 



398 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

The erection of the railroad station in the southern or 
lower part of the village of Prairie du Chien instead of the 
main or upper section, where it had generally been thought 
it would be built, caused Marmont B. Edson the loss of con- 
siderable money by his investments in real estate in the 
northern part, upon the supposition that on the completion 
of the railroad the station would be in it. The disappoint- 
ment of his expectations of realizing profitable returns by 
the sale of his property at highly advanced prices made him 
part with it as advantageously as he could, and purchase, 
in the spring of i860, a residence in Brooklyn, New York, 
known as 78 Third Place. 

The parental affection and concern of Marmont Bryan 
Edson for the welfare of his two sons are impressively dis- 
closed in a letter to his son Henry Augustus, at school in 
Essex, Connecticut, to whom he imparts judicious advice 
respecting the choice of several optional studies, and com- 
municates the appointment of his brother, Jarvis Bonesteel, 
as Acting Third Assistant Engineer in the United States 
Navy. The closing sentences of the letter glow with a fervor 
of Christian feeling highly consistent with the afflictive char- 
acter of the Civil War. 

" New York, N. Y., November 5, 1864. 

"My dear Son Henry: 

" Your welcome letter was received at noon to-day. I 
cannot go home to get Davies' Bourdon until to-night, and 
in that case it will be too late to send it by Mr. Taylor, so I 
will send it in some way at once, or write for you to buy 
one. 

" In reference to your writing, I think it best for you to 
write for a month or so perhaps, as it is for the purpose of 
having your attention dircted especially to the orthography 
and not so much to the penmanship, and then he [evidently 
Mr. Taylor] will probably correct whatever he finds is wrong 
either in the construction of sentences or the spelling. 
You can keep me informed, and I can after a few weeks 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



399 



perhaps have that (Hscontintied. If you cannot attend to 
French at once for want of time, yoii may go on without it 
for the present (as you arc the only one), but still I should 
prefer your studying that, if you could make rapid progress, 





HENRY AUGUSTUS EDSON 



even if you were to omit geometry (especiall\- if \-ou are to 
be a di])lomatist or a financier). However. geomctr\- will 
do you no luirt. You might ask Mr. C\. wliich il would be 
better for you to take of the two (in connection with \'our 
other studies and French), geomctr)- or Davics' Bourdon. 



400 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

" I do not wish you to forego the advantage of French, 
if you can possibly acquire it. 

" I hope you will find every facility for learning and 
study, and will be blessed with good health so as to pursue 
your studies without interruption. 

" I have no news in particular to communicate except 
that when Jarvis returned home, after leaving you, he found 
a letter, enclosing an appointment for him, from the Navy 
Department, Washington, as Acting Third Assistant Engi- 
neer, and ordering him on board the Fah-Kee U. S. steamer, 
at the New York Navy Yard. Accordingly, on Thursday 
morning, we started for the Navy Yard, and after looking 
at the ship, he took the usual oath of loyalty on passing his 
physical examination, and so became an officer of the United 
States Navy. 

"We have been busy as we well could be in getting his 
outfit of necessary clothing, bedding, &c., &c. He reported 
on board at 3^ p.m. 

" I took leave of him not without many regrets that he 
was to leave his home where he had always been watched 
with all the tender solicitude which I was capable of ex- 
ercising, in order that he might not only be possessed of 
a fine and manly form, without spot or wrinkle, but also of 
the requisite accompaniment of a well-balanced, vigorous 
mind stored with lessons of wisdom, and, by God's bless- 
ing, be endowed with heavenly gifts, in order that he might 
ever be an ornament to any society, however refined, a 
worthy member of the church militant, and so a useful 
citizen, in whatever calling it should please God he should 
pursue. He has gone as it seemed to please him to go, and 
yet we may, as it is our duty, hope and pray, that he may 
be preserved ' from the dangers of the sea, from sickness, 
from the violence of enemies, ' and from every other danger 
to which his body may be exposed, and that his mind and 
heart and soul and strength may be thoroughly purposed, 
to 'keep God's holy will and commandments' all the days 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 401 

of his life, and that he may finally attain life eternal ' through 
the merits' of his, and our, only Saviour, Jesus Christ, 
Amen. 

" We miss you both of course, and when we j)ray God to 
'bless all for whom we shotild pray,' our minds chvell ])ar- 
ticularly upon our dear sons and brothers, who have just 
left us. At the same time, we should alwavs bear in mind 
also ' those who are anyways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, 
body, or estate,' as well of others as of relatives and friends, 
and we should also even ]3ray God to bless our enemies, con- 
vincing them of the error of their ways, and bringing them 
to repentance and better minds. 

" My son, bear these things ever in mind, read your Bible 
daily, and not forget to pray, then and only then can w^e 
claim God's blessing according to His ])romises. May His 
blessings ever rest upon you, and may you always acknowl- 
edge Him to be your only Lord and Master is the prayer of 

your affectionate father, 

"M. B. Edson." 

He became, in 1865, financially interested in the business 
of the New York Submarine Wrecking Com]mny, of which 
he was secretary until 1868, having an office at No. 61 
William Street. In 1870. he organized the Edson Record- 
ing and Alarm Gauge Company, bearing his surname as a 
mark of honor, which was formed to manufacture patented 
instruments for recording fluid pressure, thereby saving life 
and economizing fuel, and to educate the users of steam in 
making it serviceable for their ])ur])()ses. The ])crmanent 
form of the skilfull\- designed and \'alu;ibk> instrument was 
the invention of his son, Jarx'is B. Edson. The com])an\-. 
during its existence, had the gratifying success of having a 
great number of tlie higlil}- po])ular instruments ])laced in 
mills, manufactories, steamshi])s, and power stations, not 
only in the United States 1)ul also in foreign countries. He 

served the compan\- as treasurer from 187S to 1880, and 
26 



402 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



thereafter as president until his retirement from business 
in 1886, when he was succeeded by his son, Jarvis B. Edson. 

A dark cloud of sorrow lowered over the household, at 
78 Third Place, Brooklyn, when, on vSeptember 9, 1870, 
Henry Augustus Edson, for a number of years in delicate 
health, was taken from it by death. 

Marmont Bryan Edson had a special fondness for horses, 
and as he was an expert driver he highly enjoyed riding on 
good roads, in vehicles drawn by fleet-footed horses. His 




ZYLONITE WORKS, ZYLONITE, MASS. 

son, Jarvis Bonesteel, while residing at Zylonite, in Berk- 
shire County, Massachusetts, owned a horse named "Jim," 
which, although old, had a record and was much admired 
by the father, who, when visiting there, was in the habit of 
driving. On the thirty-eighth anniversary of his son's birth, 
he wrote him the following cheery and affectionate letter : 

" New York, N. Y., April 30, 18S3. 

" My dear Son: 

" In one of your recent letters, you informed me that you 
had purchased a pair of horses ; and that I might contribute 
the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars as a 'birthday 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 403 

present' towards the transaction. You did nut inform me 
what they were to do for you or for your dear family. So I 
am left to conjecture whether it is your intention to compel 
them to convey you and yours to the hotel or to the church 
on holy day — to the resorts where the influence of ' spirits of 
wine' prevails and excludes ' the vSpirit Divine.' ' Old Jim' 
may not inform me if I should interview him, but the new 
team may enable me to judge should I get a chance to handle 
the 'ribbons' next summer — so I hope you will ])ut them m 
training so that the tale they shall tell will do you and yours 
no discredit. 

" I enclose the check. Please accept it as from vour 
mother and sister and me, with best love to you and yours. 

" Affectionately your father, 

"M. B. EdsoxN." 

A second daughter having been born to his son, Jarvis 
Bonesteel, and his daughter-in-law, Eliza Ward (Robins) 
Edson, at Adams, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, on 
December 15, 1883, they being also the parents of a daugh- 
ter, Janet DeKay, and a son, Herman Aldrich, severally 
aged eight and five years, he, on Saturday evening preceding 
Christmas that year, wrote the ha]3py ]])arents as follows: 

" 77 Liberty St., New York, 6 p.m., S.\turd.vy. 

" Dear Jarvis & Lida — ■ 

"You see it is late, but I will take time In send you cae'h 
a $ioo check, and to the new member of }'our family S5, to 
Herman $10, and to Nettie $10, for a Christmas ])resent — 
from your mother and me. I hope >'(>u are all well and as 
happy as you can and should be. \Vc arc all anxious to hear 
from you. I have no time to write more but to send best 
love to you and prayers that our Heavenly Father will con- 
tinue to you His choicest blessings and hearts of gratitude 
for all His mercy. 

" Affectionatelv vour father. 

"iM. B. l':nsox." 



404 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



His youngest daughter, Fanny Fairchild, was united in 
marriage, in Brooklyn, on February 7, 1884, to Edward 
Maxwell Reid, but lived only to December 13, that year. 




MRS. EDWARD MAXWELL REID 



From 1 87 1 to 1888, Marmont Bryan Edson was a resi- 
dent of Brooklyn, New York, at 78, now 98, Third Place, 
and then moved to New York City, where he and his wife 
had hotel apartments. He died from a surgical operation, 
at Hotel Lincoln, on the corner of Broadway and 5 2d 
Street, on April 2, 1892, nine-and- seventy years of age, less 
ten days. He was buried from Trinity Church, on April 5, 
the funeral services being conducted by the Rev. J. Nevett 
Steele, assisted by the Right. Rev. Ethelbert Talbot, D.D., 
LL.D., Missionary Bishop of Wyoming and Idaho, the Rev. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



405 



A. B. Kinsolving, and the Rev. T. S. Pycott, of Brooklyn. 
His remains were entombed in Greenwood Cemetery, in the 
family plot. 




MARMONT BRYAN EDSON 



The first term of his Christian name was given him in 
honor of Auguste Frederic Louis Viesse de Marmont. Duke 
of Ragusa, Marshal of France, 1 774-1852. Marmont Bryan 
Edson had many distincti\'e and highly reputable charac- 
teristics. His strong will gave him a vigor of action par- 
ticularly striking, marking his enter] )rises with a notable 



4o6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

energy that speedily furthered his interests in all the under- 
takings with which he was identified. His generosity was 
ennobling, and his benefactions were fragrant with true 
liberality. The testimony of the congregations of the dif- 
ferent churches of which he was a member in the West 
honors him with the grateful appreciation of the co-workers 
with whom he was associated in the erection of much-needed 
houses of worship in the places where he was a resident. 
His varied and wide experience in business declared itself 
in the due and respectful consideration that he always gave 
to the opinions and predilections of his associates. Preju- 
dices and misconceptions never blinded his mind's eye in 
discerning men's motives and purposes. Godliness was ever 
to him a power, sacred and omnipotent, for the betterment 
of humanity, whether found in the rags of poverty, or in the 
apparel of wealth. His injunctions to his children embodied 
the wisdom of Christianity. His sympathies were deep and 
tender. "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," 
never made him envious of those of exalted station, nor dis- 
contented with the lot that God had cast for him on earth. 
As an evidence of his personal interest in the work of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, his gift of 
fifty thousand dollars towards the erection of " The Church 
Missions House," on the corner of Fourth Avenue and 2 2d 
Street, in New York City, may here be cited. 

From the obituaries, published in different newspapers 
in New York City, at the time of his decease, the following 
are noteworthy: 

" Marmont B. Edson died in New York on the evening 
of Saturday, the 2d instant. He was born in Otsego 
County, N. Y., seventy-nine years ago, and was buried 
from old Trinity Church, New York City, on last Tuesday 
afternoon. His golden wedding was celebrated on October 
7, 1 891. Mr. Edson was of an inventive turn, and was 
chiefly known in the paper trade in connection with the 
Pressure Recording Gauge, which bears his name. He was 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



407 



a man of sterling integrity, of broad mind and warm heart, 
hence he was an exem])lary citizen, husband, and father. 
Of late years, he was possessed of large means, but this 




MRS. MARMONT BRYAN EDSON 



fact made no change in his dail\' walk and bearing, cxccjil 
that it enabled him to extend material assistance very often 
to worthy poor ])eople and toward church work: lie once 
made a single gift of fifty thousand dollars. With this 
exception his charities wcm'c nc^w^r known to the \V( >rld. He 



4o8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

left a widow, a son, Jarvis B. Edson, a married daughter, 
Mary Gertrude (Edson) Aldrich, a host of friends, a large for- 
tune, and an untarnished name, which of itself was the best 
heritage. 

"Always of pronounced views on live issues, he was as 
conservative and unostentatious in the display of them as 
in the bestowal of his generous bounties to the many, who 
will remember his genial nature and practical sympathy, ex- 
tended alike irrespective of race, color, or creed. 

"The death of Marmont B. Edson has removed a most 
genial and generous friend of missions. A man of sterling 
character and of large capacity in affairs, Mr. Edson was 
deeply interested in the progress of the Church, and his 
purse was ever responsive to his sympathies. His contri- 
bution enabled the General Theological Seminary to procure 
the fine portrait of the venerable Bishop White, which 
adorns the Seminary library, and a later gift founded a 
scholarship in the Alexandria Seminary. His munificence 
toward the Church Missions House following immediately 
upon a similar noble gift by his sister, Mary A. Edson, 
placed the project upon a foundation of assured success, 
and the library in the new building will be called after his 
name. Mr. Edson was an occasional caller at the Mission 
Rooms, and his visits always brought sunshine. In re- 
sponse to the card of a missionary bishop, which was handed 
to him a few days before his death, while he was confined 
to his bed, suffering severe pain, he said, ' Give my card to 

Bishop , ' handing out a roll of bills, ' and tell him that 

I regret I am not able to see him to-day.' His playful wit 
never concealed the earnestness of his heart in the great 
work of missions, and his generous gifts helped many a 
good cause." 

The New York Daily Tribune, of April 6, 1892, had what 
follows: "Marmont B. Edson died in this city Saturday 
evening last from heart failure after a short illness. Mr. 
Edson was born in Otsego County, N. Y., in 181 3. He be- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 409 

came a resident of this city early in life. The first years of 
his married Hfe were passed in the West on account of his 
poor health. He returned to the East in i860, residing in 
Brookh'n until two years ago. Mr. Edson was of an inven- 
tive turn of mind, and was prominently identified with the 
Gold and Stock Telegraph Com]3any, the Cellul* )id Com]:)any, 
the Bell Telephone Compan}-, and man\' other enterprises 
of a scientific character. Mr. Edson leaves a wife, and two 
children, Jarvis B. Edson of Brooklyn, and Mrs. James 
Herman Aldrich of this city. Mr. and Mrs. Edson cele- 
brated their golden wedding on October 7 , 1 89 1 . Genial and 
generous by nature, his strong characteristics were felt 
wherever he went. His recent gift of fifty thousand dollars, 
conjointly with one of equal amount by his sister, to the 
Missions House of the Protestant Episcopal Church, will be 
remembered, but the many unknown acts of generosity far 
and near can only be a])preciated by those who will miss his 
unostentatious thoughtfulness. He was identified for a 
quarter of a century with the Long Island diocese." 

On the opening of the new Missions House of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church Missionary Society, in 1893, the fol- 
lowing descriptive clauses were embraced in one of the pub- 
lished accounts of the event : 

" The new Missions House stands on the southeast corner 
of 2 2d Street and Fourth Avenue, on ground formerly occu- 
pied by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- 
mals. It is seven stories in height and is l^uilt in the Flemish 
style of architecture. It and the land cost $450,000, all of 
which was given by individual subscribers including J. Pier- 
pont Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the late Marmont B. 
Edson, and Miss Mary A. Edson, his sister. 

" Nothing is lacking in the appointments on the second 
floor of the structure to make it especially adapted to the 
uses to which it will be put. The hallway is of j)olished 
Florentine mosaic, and the floors of the offices are of the 
parquet ])attern. Also on the second flexor arc rooms for 



4IO EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the library, the Woman's AuxiHary, board room, and chapel. 
The library and rooms for the Woman's Auxiliary stand as 
memorials to Marmont B. Edson and Miss Edson, each of 
whom contributed fifty thousand dollars to the building 
shortly before their deaths. ' ' ' 

On the east wall of the room used by the Woman's Aux- 
iliary is a brass plate bearing the following inscription : 

"The Mary A. Edson Hall, 

To the Glory of God, and in Sacred Memory of Mary A. 

Edson, one of the largest contributors to this building, 

A.D. 1894." 

Another brass plate, on the south wall of the library, is 

inscribed : 

"The Edson Library, 

To the Glory of God, and in Sacred Memory of Marmont 

B. Edson, one of the largest contributors to this building, 

A.D. 1894." 

Margaret Barbara (Bonesteel) Edson, his widow, erected 
to his memory a large and excellently made organ in Christ 
Protestant Episcopal Church, on the corner of Clinton and 
Harrison streets, Brooklyn, N. Y., where, at its opening, on 
the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity, October 29, 1893, 
special commemorative services were conducted. 

The Right Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, D.D., late Bishop of 
the Diocese of Long Island, N. Y., in an address in Christ 
Church, at Sag Harbor, N. Y., on November 8, 1893, said: 



' The contributions are recorded as follows in the books of the Society: 
"1890, May 5th: N. Y., New York, the Rev. W. R. Huntington, Grace 
Church. — A Member, $50,000." The member was Miss Mary A. Edson. 

"1890, May 26th: L. L, Brooklyn, Marmont B. Edson, $50,000, 'to be 
used in the erection of a Church Missions House for The Domestic and Foreign 
Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U. S. A., said 
Missions House to be the headquarters of the said Society, with the stipulation 
that in the use of the building for the promotion of the interests of Missions 
and in all its privileges, the Negro and Indian races shall have the same rights 
as are accorded to the white race.' " 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 411 

"Marmont B. Edson's name awakens in me tender and 
precious memories. For years he was my beloved and 
faithful parishioner. For a long time we walked together 
in the things that belonged to our peace. Single-minded, 




%' 




MARY AUGUSTA EDSON 



devout, his heart full of faith and love, and his life quite as 
much so, of the patience and comfort of the Holy Scrip- 
tures and of the Church, he slowl}^ but surely ripened for the 
skies; and when God took him from us, it was a translation 
rather than a death. But why should I detain you with 
these words when, if a word ])ertinent is to l)c altcniplcd, 
it is ready to our hand in the fifteenth Psalm of the Psalter, 
which I shall ask )'ou to read elsewhere, and, when xou 
read, to believe that Marmont B. Edson, allowing for the 



412 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

inevitable infirmities of even a sanctified human nature, 
was not unworthy of that remarkable description of the 
man of God who shall rest upon His holy hill." 

Margaret Barbara (Bonesteel) Edson, his widow, now in 
the eighty-third year of her age, was liberally educated at 
the Female Seminary in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where 
she became highly proficient as a pianist and an artist in 
water-color painting. She is a woman of remarkable phy- 
sique, strong vitality, and worthily desirous of being loved 
and honored by her children, and esteemed by those long 
bound to her by ties of affection and friendship. 

Susan Maria Edson, the younger sister of Marmont 
Bryan Edson, died at No. i6 East 17th Street, New York 
City, on June 30, 1885. His elder sister, Mary Augusta 
Edson, also died there, on May 29, 1890. The remains of 
both repose in graves in the family burial lot in Greenwood 
Cemetery. Inheriting great wealth as they did, through 
the will of their brother, Tracy Robinson Edson, with whom 
they had resided until his decease in 1881, they severally, 
during their lives, were liberal dispensers of many private 
benefactions, and at their death left gifts and bequests, ex- 
ceeding a half million of dollars, for a large number of chari- 
table objects and religious institutions. 

The two zealous sisters were actively engaged in large 
fields of church work. Long-time and devout members of 
Grace Protestant Episcopal Church, they were always lib- 
eral in their gifts to promote and sustain its well-known 
reputation as a Christian organization, prominent and dis- 
tinguished, for the propagation of the Gospel and the suc- 
cessful accomplishment of the many worthy undertakings of 
the parishioners. They died unmarried, having affection- 
ately bestowed, in a somewhat exclusive manner, much of 
their attention and time in promoting the welfare and happi- 
ness of their brother, Tracy Robinson Edson. They were 
fond of reading the works of the best authors of prose and 
verse, and manifested a strong partiality for history and 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 413 

biography, as also they did for works narrating the rise 
and spread of Christianity, and those ]mrticularizing the 
faith and afflictions of sainted men and women. Of strong 
individuahties, and marked manners, they evinced i^artic- 











t7v 



SUSAN MARIA EDSON 



ularly their k)ve for one another b\' an engaging deference 
of o]3inion and judgment, as well as a constant solicitude 
for each other's health and hap])iness. 

On Wednesday afternoon. May 14, 1902, the corner- 
stone of White Hall, so named in memory of the Right Rev. 
William White, D.D., the first Bishc^]) of the Diocese of 
Pennsylvania, was laid; the building being the first of three 
dormitories to be erected on the grounds of the ( u^neral 
Theological Seminary of the Protestant I'Ipiscopal Church 



414 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

in New York City. As has been announced, " the others 
will be Edson Hall, in memory of Tracy R. Edson, Susan 
M. Edson, and Mary A. Edson, who gave large endowments 
to the Seminary, and Lorillard Hall, in memory of George 
Lorillard, who left a large legacy to the institution. ' ' 



Chapter XIV 

Jarvis Bonestecl Edson 

1845-19— 

IN early youth, Jarvis B. Edson was curious when he 
* saw machinery, and showed aptness for understanding 
the correlation of its parts. This led his father to give 
him such practical and scientific education, along the line 
of his inclination, as would best serve to make him a use- 
ful and successful man, in new a])])lications of scientific 
principles. 

The fifteen years of his Western frontier life, in which 
he began acquiring the rudiments of an education in the 
little log schoolhouse at Decatur, and afterward advanced 
under more favorable auspices along lines of instruction in 
a private school at Prairie du Chien, inducted him into 
many experiences that were of great personal benefit to 
him, particularly that of an acquaintanceshi]) with the stal- 
wart character of the hardy, toiling pioneers of lln^ Great 
West, who, with ennobling fortitude, bore the har(lshi])S 
incidental to their straitened circumstances, and by in- 
domitable enterprise and strenuous efforts found themselves 
in time the ])ossessors of comfortable homes and adequate 
means for the enjoyment of such ha[)piness as the same 
afforded them. 

When Brooklyn became, in i860, the residence n[ the 
family, his scholarly diligence, while attending the College 
Grammar School, under the charge of the Re\-. Le\i Wells 
Hart, A.M., in the Marble Block, between the City Hall 

415 



4i6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

and Packer Institute, placed his name, in October of that 
year, on the school's roll of honor, for perfect recitations, 
he being then in "Grade A." In 1862, he entered as a 
sophomore the University of the City of New York. 

When, in the early summer of 1 863, the Army of Northern 
Virginia, under General Robert E. Lee, crossed the Potomac 
River into Maryland and invaded Pennsylvania, a spirit of 
irrepressible patriotism forthwith spread through the State 
of New York, inciting men, both old and young, straightway 
to take up arms and hasten southward to oppose the north- 
erly advance of the Confederate forces. Jarvis B. Edson 
at once left college and volunteered, and was enrolled in 
Brooklyn, on the i8th of June, 1863, a member of Company 
D, commanded by Captain Allen L. Bassett, in the Twenty- 
third Regiment of the National Guard of the State of New 
York, for service in the United States Army, and departed 
at once for the seat of war in Pennsylvania. In attempting 
to reach the field of battle, at Gettysburg, by forced marches 
during the prevalence of extreme heat, the regiment lost 
the service of many of its men by the affliction of sunstroke. 
In order to prevent the retreat of the Confederate Army 
into Virginia, the regiment, with other bodies of Union 
troops, was ordered, on the 4th and 5th of July, to bar one 
of the gaps or passes in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but 
most of the strategic enemy escaped through several that 
were found open. This detail, however, kept them from 
participating in the battle of Gettysburg or in the burial 
of its dead. 

Meanwhile the draft-riots, in the cities of New York and 
Brooklyn, of the lawless element in the absence of the local 
militia regiments at the seat of war, made their speedy re- 
turn imperatively necessary. The Twenty- third Regiment 
was thereupon ordered to return to Brooklyn without un- 
necessary delay. In a loyal endeavor to reach a point 
where transportation by cars could be furnished it, the regi- 
ment one day marched the distance of thirty-five miles. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 417 

The ability of private Jarvis B. Edson to endure the fatigue 
of the march is highly gratifying to liini as a recollection 
of the Civil War. 

As related by him, the train on which the regiment had 
passage from Baltimore to Jersey City ran on the track be- 
tween trains conveying ca])tured Confederate soldiers north- 
ward, and as a consequence the members of the twenty- third 
Regiment, whose uniforms were gray, and much soiled, were 
assumed to be prisoners of war, to whom not a little sym- 
pathy was expressed by disloyal Northern people, especially 
when passing through New Jersey, where, at different points, 
men waved to them in open view Confederate flags and 
handkerchiefs, and women displayed underskirts of similar 
insignia. The day being vSunday, the passage of the trains 
bearing the prisoners across the vState engaged the atten- 
tion of throngs of interested peoi3le. 

Owing to the heavy falls of rain and the inexperience of 
the regiment's commissary and quartermaster, the officers 
and men suffered great deprivations, particularly that of the 
want of rations at different times in the field and in going 
to and returning from the seat of war. When the regiment 
reached the warehouses on the Atlantic Docks, in Brooklyn, 
the members of it were so exceedingly hungry that they 
impetuously thrust their hands into the kettles filled with 
boiling meat and ])ulled it out without waiting to have it 
distributed. By reason of the expiration of the term of 
his enlistment, Jarvis B. Edson was honorabl\- discharged 
from the service of the United States, on the twenty-second 
of July, 1863, at Brooklyn. 

The regiment left the city on June 23, 1863, undcM- the 
command of Colonel William Everdell, Jr. It was mustered 
into the service of the United vStates at Harrisburg, Pa., 
for thirty days. At Han-isljurg and in its \-icinity, the 
regiment was embraced in the third brigade of the first 
division of the Army of the Department of the Susque- 
hanna, and ])articipated in the engagements with the enemy 



27 



4i8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

at Oyster Point, Pa., on June 28, and at Carlisle, Pa., on 
July I, 1863. 

The hardships of the short campaign having temporarily 
unfitted Jarvis B. Edson for continuing his college course, he, 
following an inclination to be a mechanician, found employ- 
ment in the fall of that year as an apprentice in the South 
Brooklyn Steam Engine and Boiler Works, where he was 
engaged in building engines and putting them in position on 
a number of government war vessels, embracing the Mendota, 
Metacomet, Nyack, and Nipsic. Afterward he conducted a 
series of steam-engine expansion experiments, known as the 
Hecker- Waterman experiments, in a building on Cherry 
Street, New York, under the supervision of Chief Engineer 
B. F. Isherwood, U.S.N., chief of the Bureau of Steam En- 
gineering in Washington, D. C, who weekly inspected and 
directed the work in hand. The exj^ense of these experi- 
ments was $25,000, and was borne by Mr. George V. Hecker. 

This employment was followed by his serving for a short 
time as a supernumerary engineer on the steamship Arago, 
of the New York and Havre Line, chartered by the National 
Government for a transport connected with the North and 
the South Atlantic blockading squadrons. Having had this 
experience of sea-service, and aware of the probability of 
his being drafted into the service of the United States during 
the continuance of the Civil War, and preferring duty in 
the Navy, he formally applied for an appointment in the 
Corps of Engineers. Shortly thereafter he was officially noti- 
fied of his appointment, on November i, 1864, as Acting 
Third Assistant Engineer in the Navy of the United States, 
and was ordered to report immediately to the commanding 
officer of the Fah-Kee, an armed steamer carrying supplies 
to the North and the South Atlantic blockading squadrons, 
then at the New York Navy Yard. As particularized in 
his father's letter to his brother, Henry Atigustus, on Novem- 
ber 5, 1864, he repaired in company with his father to the 
Navy Yard in Brooklyn, where he took the required oath 







dMu^ mo'i^ <p-^>iy^ , . • <?^ 7 






JARVIS BONESTEEL EPSON'S APPOINTMENT AS ACTING THIRD ASSISTANT ENGINEER 



419 



420 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

of loyalty to the National Government. Having returned 
home to get a necessary outfit of clothing, he reported for 
dutv on the Fah-Kee in the afternoon. 

The letter which his father wrote immediately after- 
ward to his brother Henry Augustus, at school in Essex, 
Connecticut, is a touching expression of a parent's affection 
for a son, and merits precious remembrance on the part of 
him who elicited it. 

" I took leave of him, [Jarvis,] not without many regrets 
that he was to leave his home where he had always been 
watched with all the tender solicitude which I was capable 
of exercising, in order that he might not only be possessed 
of a fine and manly form, without spot or wrinkle, but also 
of the requisite accompaniment of a well-balanced, vigorous 
mind, stored with lessons of wisdom, and, by God's blessing, 
be endowed with heavenly gifts, in order that he might ever 
be an ornament to any society, however refined, a worthy 
member of the Church militant, and so a useful citizen, in 
whatever calling it should please God he should pursue." 

His term of duty on the Fah-Kee was not of long contin- 
uance, and on December 23, 1864, he was ordered to the 
Cambridge, a double-decked gunboat, on blockade service off 
Charleston, South Carolina. He took passage on the Newhern 
for Norfolk, Va., where he found her and reported for duty. 

The Cambridge thereafter being with the fleet on block- 
ade duty off the coast of the Carolinas, and within signal 
distance of the places of capture of the blockade-running 
vessels, the Celt, Cyrene, Deer, and Sylph, Jarvis B. Edson 
was apportioned a share of the prize-money awarded to the 
different vessels of the squadron effecting their capture. 
Being on the Cambridge at the time of the surrender of 
Charleston, he entered Fort Sumter on its evacuation while 
the candles illuminating the bomb-proofs were still burning, 
and visited Charleston the same day, where he saw ample evi- 
dence of the ruin wrought by the shot and shell of the ves- 
sels of the United States Navy in service off the harbor and 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 421 

the neighboring forts. While on blockade duty, the Cam- 
bridge was frequently under the fire of the fortifications of 
Charleston and Wilmington harbors, and that of Fort Fisher. 

On January 12, 1865, ^^^' passed at sea. south of Cape 
Lookout, Commodore Porter's great fleet of war vessels on 
its way to attack Fort Fisher, sailing in three long ecjlumns, 
followed by a reserve division, fifty-two vessels in all, and 
in its wake a third as many army transports with land 
forces. The immense squadron of formidable vessels, of 
different sizes and construction, all in o])en view, was an 
engaging and memorable spectacle which he witnessed with 
intense interest. 

At Port Royal, S. C, about the end of April, 1865, he was 
ordered to take the unseaworthy, little government tugboat 
Carnation, going at the rate of four and a half knots, to the 
Philadelphia Navy Yard for repairs, which service detached 
him from duty on the Cambridge. The weather being fa\-or- 
able, he made this dangerous sea-voyage successfulh-. 

His service on the United States steamer 1 Vasp, to which 
he was ordered for duty, on July 25, 1865, then at Philadel- 
phia, brought him many noteworthy experiences when cruis- 
ing in the Caribbean Sea and the South Atlantic Ocean. 

The vessel was off Pointe-a-Pitre, island of Guadeloupe, 
of the Leeward Islands, in the autumn of 1865. during an 
earthquake, and encountered there the force of the resulting 
West-Indian hurricane and a great tidal wave that wrecked 
many vessels and destroyed much property on the numerous 
islands in that part of the Caribbean Sea. The U. S. S. 
Hoiisatonic was thrown by the tidal wave so far inland that 
it was years before she was re-launched. The prompt aitl 
which the officers and crew of the H'tj.v/' extenck'd the sufter- 
ing inhabitants of the iskmd of Marie Galante, a possession 
of France, was gratefulh' receix'ed \)\ the distressed peo]')le, 
and for which timely assistance Ca]:)tain William A. Kirk- 
land, commanding the vessel, was at a later date ])resented 
with a medal of honor by the French Go\ernment. 



422 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

While the Wasp was at anchor, in February, 1868, in 
the port of Montevideo, the capital of the republic of 
Uruguay, on the north side of the spacious estuary of the 
Rio de la Plata, immediately north of the thirty-fifth parallel 
of south latitude, one hundred and twenty miles from 
Buenos Ayres, in the Argentine Republic, an insurrection 
against the administration of Venancio Flores, the Presi- 
dent of Uruguay, was begun. On the fifteenth of February, 
he and his ministers resigned their offices, having in view 
the settlement of the existing political differences at the 
approaching election, which was near at hand. 

On the afternoon of the nineteenth of February, as re- 
lated by Acting Third Assistant Engineer Edson, in a letter 
to his brother Henry Augustus, the ex- President and two 
of his ministers were fired upon by a party of rebellious 
Blancos (whites), ais they were called in Spanish, and killed, 
and thirty minutes thereafter all business in Montevideo 
was suspended. The city immediately became the scene of 
lawlessness and bloodshed. Armed citizens rushed in ex- 
cited crowds from place to place ; rabid and revengeful men 
forcibly entered the houses of peaceful residents and mur- 
dered the inmates: viciously committing acts of violence 
and cruelty of a most fiendish character. 

The flagship of the United States fleet was away at that 
time from the port of Montevideo, and the captain com- 
manding the Wasp, the senior officer present, straightway 
sent Lieutenant-Commander A. N. Mitchell, the Executive 
Officer, and Acting Third Assistant Engineer Jarvis B. Edson, 
with a detachment of fifty men, to take charge of the custom- 
house {La Aduana). Detachments from the English, French, 
Spanish, German, Russian, and Italian vessels at anchor in 
the harbor soon came ashore and took part in the protection 
of the buildings, for they contained the property of foreign 
suVjjects. Acting Third Assistant Engineer Edson was 
shortly thereafter given command of the men assigned to 
guard the building occupied by the United States Consul, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 423 

then a safe sanctuary for the refugees seeking protection 
there from the violence of the rcvokitionists, for elsewhere 
in the city there was none|for life or ])r()perty, either by 




LA ADUANA, MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY 

day or by night. The admiral of the French fleet, by right 
of courtesy and seniority, had command of the various 
national detachments guarding the custom-house and the 
consulates. 

Asiatic cholera was extremely virulent in the city during 
the insurrection, and not onl}' did great numbers of the in- 
habitants die of the dread disease, but man\' of the officers 
and men of the European warships, both ashore and aboard 
ship. Singular as true, none of the officers and men of the 
United States naval vessels fell victims to it. All the 
officers and men of the foreign fleets, some of whom were 
still sick and others fearful of being e])i(lcniicall\' afflicted, 
embarked on their different vessels, which thereu])on de- 
parted from the harl)or, k>a\'ing the ciisloiii-house and the 
consular buildings again under the e.N.clusi\e [)rotcclion of 
the United States naval forces. 

The insurrection was linally sii])])resse(l, and [he murder- 
ers of the ex-Presi(kMil executed. On the first of ^hu•ch. 
the General Assembl}', 1)\" a unanimous vote, elected Colonel 
Lorenzo Battle, previousl_\- the Minister of War, President 
of the Re])ul)lic. 



424 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



During the three years of his cruising in the Caribbean 
Sea and the South Atlantic Ocean, Acting Third Assistant 
Engineer Edson repeatedly visited the ports of the north 




JARVIS BONESTEF.L EDSON 



and south coasts of Brazil and those of the Argentine Con- 
federation, and also ascended the Rio de la Plata for a dis- 
tance of fifteen hundred miles, during the Paraguayan War, 
to rescue two American citizens. While in Paraguay he 
received orders to return to the United States, whither he 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 425 

arrived in the month of August, 1868, after a continuous run 
of ninet}' days. 

The following transcript of his discharge from the Navy 
of the United States was sent liim from Washington: 

" Navy Df.partment, August 27, 1S68. 

"The war for the ])reservation of the Union having 
under the beneficent guidance of Almight>' God been l)r()ught 
to a successful termination, a reduction of the naval forces 
becomes necessary. Having served with fidelity in the 
United States Navy, from ist day of November, 1864, to 
present date, you are hereby honorably discharged with the 
thanks of the Department. 

" Respectfully, 

" Gideon Welles. 

Secretary of the Navy. 
" To Acting Third Assistant Engineer 

" Jarvis B. P:dson, U. S. N., 
" No. 78 Third Pl.\ce, Brooklyn, N. Y." 

His life at sea did not lessen but gave greater stability 
to the natural bent of his mind toward the exercise of his 
ingenuity in designing and perfecting mechanical i inden- 
tions for the more speedy and safe accomplishment of the 
manufacturing ])urposes of men. Then three-and- twenty 
years old, he earnestl}^ turned his thoughts to the perfec- 
tion of an instrument for recording the ])ressure of fluids, 
which he was so successful in doing that a number of jiat- 
ents were issued to him. His hiijhh' scr\'iceal )lc inventions 
received honorable mention and first prizes at a score of ex- 
positions at home and abroad, besides the important award 
by the City of Philadel])hia of the Jc^hn Scott Legac\- Pre- 
mium and Medal, through the trustees of the Franklin In- 
stitute of Philadel])hia, and of t\vent\" dollars in gold as an 
expression of the appreciaticm to which he was justly entitled 
"for the excellent develo]^ment of his i^ressure recording 
gauge," being given "to the most deserxing" iinentor. 



426 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 




EDSON'S RECORDING AND 

ALARM PRESSURE 

GAUGE 



Upon the organization of the Edson Recording Gauge 
Company, in 1870, of which his father was elected president 

and he vice-president, the company hav- 
ing its office at 91 Liberty Street, he held 
that position, and served the company as 
superintendent, until 1873. 

He then turned his attention to the 
furtherance of the public use of electric 
inventions and became associated, at No. 
52 Broadway, with Thomas Alva Edison, 
then acquiring wide fame for the marvel- 
lous novelty and general usefulness of the 
electric instruments and appliances de- 
signed by him. 

In 1874, Jarvis B. Edson organized 
the Domestic Telegraph Company, of which he and Thomas 
Alva Edison and J. T. Murray were trustees. In December, 
that year, the company was reorganized ; General Thomas T. 
Eckert being elected its president, Thomas Alva Edison its 
vice-president, D. G. Farwell its secretary, and Jarvis B. Ed- 
son its general manager, who, in 1875, was elected its vice- 
president ; the company having then its office at No. 1 2 Vesey 
Street. The company was organized for public service similar 
to that of the American District Telegraph Company. By a 
signal instrument placed in a dwelling, store, manufactory, 
bank, office, or other place of business, the company was en- 
abled to provide its patrons speedily with the service of a mes- 
senger, policeman, or fireman with a Babcock extinguisher. 
The messengers, commonly boys, wore lettered and num- 
bered metallic badges and were uniformed in gray clothing 
with black trimmings, and performed a variety of duties, 
such as the delivery of letters and notes, making purchases 
at stores, and calling physicians to attend the sick. The 
company successfully competed with the American District 
Telegraph Company for public patronage, and its spirited 
competition was the means of reducing the cost of that 




MRS. JARVIS BONESTEEL EDSON 



427 



428 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



particular service to one fifth of ^the rating originally estab- 
lished for it. This company finally sold its business to the 
Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. 

Jarvis B. Edson's fortunate acquaintance with Eliza 
Ward Robins led to their marriage, which was attended by 
their relatives and many friends at Christ Protestant Epis- 




JANET DE KAY EDSON 



copal Church, in Brooklyn, on February 9, 1875; the Rev. 
L. W. Bancroft, D.D., the rector, uniting them in the bonds 
of holy matrimony. They resided that year at 396 Clinton 
Street, Brooklyn, where, on November 2, they were blessed 
by the birth of a daughter, who soon thereafter was chris- 
tened Janet De Kay, in honor of her mother's mother, Janet 
De Kay (Rhoades) Robins, deceased on May 30, 1873. 

Having sold his interest in the Domestic Telegraph 
Company, he devoted ten years to the manufacture of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



429 



zylonite, more commonly known as celluloid, and to de- 
signing and perfecting machiner}' with which to advance 
more speedily and better the processes of its production, 
coloring, and induration, during which time he obtained 




MRS. HARRY SMITH KELTY 



thirt}- or more patents on the machinery and processes 
devised by him for those special purposes. At the Cellu- 
loid Manufacturing Company's works, at Newark, N. J., 
of which company General Marshall Lefferts was president, 
he demonstrated, for the first time, the feasibility of getting 
fresh water from deep wells in the New Jersey salt-water 
meadows. 

While residing in Newark, X. J., a son was bom to him 
on Julv 7, 1878, who, at baptism, was named Herman 
Aldrich. 

About the beginning of August, 1881. Jarvis B. Edson 
changed his residence to Adams, Berkshire County, Mass., 
where he began erecting buildings for the manufacture of 
zylonite for the American Zylonite Company, of which he 



430 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



was the superintendent and general manager. There he 
publicty demonstrated the practicabihty of getting flowing 




MADELON KELTY 
(Daughter of Mrs. Harry Smith Kelty) 



water from deeply piped wells, where previously all attempts 
at doing it had proved signal failures. 

In the Scientific American of Septeml^er 8, 1883, the suc- 
cess attending his ingenuity in making such an undertaking 
practicable was editorially cited : 

"A new and great advance has been made in sinking 
deep-well pipes in soil that will resist the sinking of a driven- 
well pipe. 

"The hydraulic ]:)ressure system has been successfully 
applied at Adams, Mass., where sixteen artesian wells are 
now flowing; one of one hundred and eighty- seven feet in 
depth, which was sunk in two hours; one of them has a 
ten- inch diameter pipe, through which four hundred gallons 
of water flow every minute, having at the surface a discharge 
pressure of six and one half pounds, 

"The penetration of the soil for these wells was accom- 
plished by the boring power of water under pressure; the 
required pressure being maintained by the agency of a 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



431 



steam-] juni]). As a consequence of llic different experi- 
ments made in ] )crfectin^c^ this method of sinkins^ pipes for 
such wells, the fact was 1)rought to lij^dit that a stream of 
water forced into the to]) of a i)i])e penetrating the soil 




HERMAN ALDRICH EDSON 



would keep an opening around llic outside of the pi])e for 
a depth of forty or fifty feet, ])ut wiicn llic downward flow 
of water was sto])])ed in order to ])enctrate to a greater 
depth with additional lengths of i)ii)e, sand, gravel, and 
clay began at once to settle around and wedge the ])i])e so 
tightlx" that no a\aihil)le pressure of water eould nio\o ihe 
obstructing material. In avoiding this accumulation of 
clay, sand, and graxel ccjnsists the no\clt_\' of the discovered 
method. 

" Bv ])lacing in llic line of {\\c ]M])c at c\'cr\' two Icngllis 
of it a three-wa}' cock, and by using two linesof hose, perfect 



432 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



control of a constant flow of water down the pipe dur- 
ing the entire operation is obtained. The hose being at- 
tached to the side outlet of the three-way cock, with the 
plug of the cock across the upper outlet while the section 




HERMAN ALDRICH EDSON 



of pipe is descending and the attached hose is touching the 
ground, another section of pipe is added and another length 
of hose is attached to a three-way cock as previously, and a 
pressure of water is put on through another length of hose ; 
the lower cock meanwhile being turned to shut off the 
water in the lower hose and start a flow of water through 
the upper hose. In this way a depth of three hundred feet 
was obtained without difficulty in the space of a few hours." 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AXI) AMI-RICA 



433 



For this valuable invention, |ar\is H. I^dson was granted 
two foundation-patents, whieh to him were \'er\' remunera- 
tive. 

At Adams, Mass., tlie famih- was inereased to five mem- 




MARMONT EDSON 



bers by the 1)irth, on neceml)er i 5, 1 883, of a second daugh- 
ter, Ethel Ward Edson. 

In the spring of 1884, Jarxis B. Edson returned to 
Brooklyn, and resided at 199 Saint John's Plaee, where, 
on Mareh 27, 1886, the infant daii^lUer, Ethel Ward Ed- 
son, died. Thence the liousdiold rcmoxcd in May, that 
year, to a new home ])resented by his ])arents at 812 
Union Street, wlicrc, on June 10, 1888, llic birth of a second 
son was an ewnt markc(] with no little joy to its mem- 
bers. In honor of his grandfather, this son was named 
Marniont. 



434 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



Jarvis B. Edson resumed in 1886, in the city of New 
York, the manufacture of the Edson Recording Pressure 
Gauge, at 91 Liberty Street, becoming the sole proprietor 
of it. His office and manufactory continued there until 




MARMONT EDSON 



1889, when it was changed to 87 Liberty Street, where it 
was until 1896, when he sold his rights and interests in the 
gauge to the Ashcroft Manufacturing Company, and retired 
from 1)usiness, owing to ill-health. 

In 1890, Jarvis B. Edson purchased a spacious plot of 
ground on a prominent knoll on the west side of Shelter 
Island, Suffolk County, N. Y., about one hundred miles east 
of New York City, where he erected that year a handsome 



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436 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



summer home, having an extensive view of Long Island 
Sound and Shelter Island Sound and the eastern projec- 
tion of Long Island. Each year the family enjoys there a 
respite from the oppressive heat of the summer months, 
frequently driving on the shaded roadways of the attractive 




J. B. EDSON'S RESIDENCE, SHELTER ISLAND, N. Y. 

island, or, seated on the awning-covered deck of the fast 
steam yacht Claymore, of the New York Yacht Club, pleas- 
urably plying the waters of the numerous bays and channels 
environing the picturesque islands clustered easterly of Long 
Island. 

In 1893, having determined to build himself a home in 
New York Cit^^ Jarvis B. Edson jnirchased a highly eligible 
and valuable site, on the north side of West 74th Street, be- 
tween Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, commanding 
a wide and inviting view of the Hudson River, and the 
western landscape beyond it, in the State of New Jersey. 
With deliberate judgment, he resolved to erect a residence 
differing in many ways in its architecture from the contem- 



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E.DSON RESIDENCE, 313 WEST 74TH ST., NEW YORK 



438 




RECEPTION ROOM, 313 W. 74TH ST., N. Y. 



439 



440 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



poraneous conventional styles, entirely fire-proof, heated 
by steam, lighted by electricity, cooled by artificial means, 
having a dining-room and a kitchen on the uppermost 



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SHOWING FIRE-PROOF GONSTHUCTION OF 313 W. 74TH ST., N. Y. 



Stories, with requisite elevators and duml:)-waiters severally 
moved by power generated on the premises. Within five 
years after its erection, no first-class residence in the cit}^ 




STEAM YACHT "claymore," N. Y. Y. C. (See p. 436) 

was built without reproducing the leading features of its 
construction. On the completion of the building, in Janu- 
ary, 1895, it was occupied by the family, previously resid- 
ing at 812 Union Street, Brooklyn. 

In 1886 the family made a tour of England and the 



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442 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



Continent, passage outward and homeward having been 
taken in the steamship Adriatic of the White Star Line. 




STEAMSHIP "ADRIATIC," VOYAGE OF 1886 

The parents and two sons again went a1:)road in 1898, visiting 
England and France, going and returning on the steamshi]) 
St. Paul of the American Line. 

Jarvis B. Edson is one of the early members of the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which, on Thurs- 
day, December 5, 1901, unveiled a monument erected by it, 
in Trinity Churchyard, New York City, to the memory of 
Robert Fulton, the projector of steam navigation on the 
Hudson River, whose remains are entombed near the base 
of the granite shaft. Jarvis B. Edson is also a charter 
member of the Naval Order of the United States, besides 
being a member of the American Society of Naval Engineers, 
the Franklin Institute, the United States Naval Institute, 
the Sons of the Revolution, the Engineers' Clu1:) of New 
York, the Colonial Club of New York, the Montauk Club of 



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EDSONS IN ENGLAXT) AXD A^FI-UK'A 445 

Brooklyn, the New York Yacht Chil). and <)( IxMlford Lodge, 
No. 574, of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of I)r()()kl\-n, 
a member of the Wisconsin Society, and a charter mem])er 
of the recently incorporated Navy League of the United 
States. He is a member, as is also his wife, of .Ml .\ngels 
Protestant Episcopal Church, New York Cit\', of which the 
Rev. S. DeLancey Townsend, Ph.D., D.I)., is rector. In 
politics, he is a Republican, as was his father, whi > ] )reviously 
had been an old-line Whig. 

Jarvis B. Edson has the stature of many of his ances- 
tors, being six feet three fourths of an incli in lieight, and 
weighing over t\\'o hundred pounds. He is distinctively a 
man of executive ability, an inx'cntor, outs]3oken, strong in 
his convictions, of unostentatious manners, sympathetic, 
and liberal. Catholic in his views of Christianity, he 
has never been a disparager of the religious faith of others. 
Good government - national, state, and nninici])al -he 
has always upheld 1)y l)allot and ()])inion, \"igorously 
advocating individual responsibility for its maintenance. 
He has never sought political candidature nor any offi- 
cial position for the sake of honor, either as a civilian, a 
churchman, or a member of a club. As a husband and a 
father, he highly esteems the comforts of a well-ordered and 
attractive home, brightened by joyous and refined ex])res- 
sions of domestic ha])])iness, kioking u])on them as Intt 
the reasonable reward of a life almost wliollx- sjkmU in 
activity and struggle. 

From early youth he shouldered the work of a man and 
succeeded. His was work that knew no end, an<] where 
many rested he continued, until, after thirt\- odd >-ears of 
labor he w^elcome sa well-earned retirement for the enjoy- 
ment of the retrospect so full of the achie\-ements distinguish- 
ing the wonderful century in which lu- li\ed and (»t which 
he formed an integral part. 



Genealogy of the Edsons 

1 480-1 903 

1. Thomas Edson, progenitor, born probal)!}- in Adderbury, 
Oxfordshire, England, about 1480, married Juliana, daughter of 
John and EHzabeth (Fox) Bustard, of Adderbury. 

Children : 

2. Richard, born in Adderbury, Oxfordshire. 

3. Margaret, born in Adderbury, Oxfordshire. 

2. Richard, son of Thomas i and Juliana (Bustard) li^dson, 

born in Adderbury, Oxfordshire, England, married Agnes . 

His body was buried, in 1558, in the churchyard of "All llal- 
lowes" (All Saints), in I^'^illongley, Warwickshire, England. 

Children : 

4. Christiana. 

5. Anne. 

6. Thomas, died 1587: married Ellen . 

6. Thomas, son of Richard 2 and Agnes Edson, born [)rob- 

ably in Fillongley, Warwickshire, England, married Ellen . 

His remains were interred in the church\-ard of All Saints, in 
P'illongley, on January 15, 1587. 

Children : 

7. Elizabeth, ])a])lizc<l in i'illongley, on August 21, 1562. 

8. Nicholas, baptized in Fillongley on October 28, 1565. 

9. Richard, baptized in Fillongley on May y, 1568. 

10. 'rhomas, baptized in l-'illongley on September 7, 1572. 
1 1. William, baptized in I-"illongley on November i, 1576. 

William Edson, the fourth son, died in Fillongley on November 22, 157O. 

10. Thomas, son of Thomas 6 and Ellen Edson. baptized in 
Fillongley, Warwickshire, England, on Septeml)er 7, 1572; mar- 
ried there, on Novemlicr t, 1506, Elizabeth Cojison. 

Children : 

12. William, baj.)tized in I'illongley on March 4, i5(>8. 

13. Anna, baptized in Fillongley on August 22, 1602. 

447 



448 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

14. Nicholas, baptized in FillonCTley on March 6, 1607. 

15. Amphilhs, baptized in Fillongley on August 12, 16 10. 

16. Samuel, baptized in Fillongley on September 5, 161 3. 

17. Joshua, baptized in Fillongley on Febuary 2, T6rC. 

18. Walter, baptized in Fillongley on January 30, i6ig. 

Nicholas Edson, the second son, was buried in Fillongley on April 4, 1608. 
Walter Edson, the fifth son, was bviried there on December i, 1633. 

16. Samuel, son of Thomas 10 and Elizabeth (Copson) Edson, 
baptized in Fillongley, Warwickshire, England, on September 5, 
1 613; married in Warwickshire, in 1638, Susanna Orcutt, born 
there in 1618. He was residing in Salem, Mass., in 1639, but 
removed to the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province 
of Massachusetts Bay, New England, where he died on July 19, 
1692, aged eighty years; and his widow in the same place on 
February 20, 1699, aged eighty-one years. 

Children : 

19. Susanna, born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, New 

England, in 1640. 

20. Sarah, born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, New 

England, about 1641. 

21. Elizabeth, born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, New 

England, about 1643. 

22. Samuel, born in the town (jf Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, New 

England, in 1645. 

23. Mary, bom in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, New Eng- 

land, about 1647. 
24.'^ Joseph, born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, New 
England, about 1649. 

25. Josiah, bom in Duxbury Plantation, colony of New Plymouth, New Eng- 

land, in 1 65 1. 

26. Bethiah, born in Duxbury Plantation, colony of New Plymouth, New 

England, about 1653. 

Samuel Edson's wife and all his children were living when he 
made his will, on January 15, 1688-9. He was a deacon in the 
church. He represented Bridgewater, Mass., in the Plymouth 
Court, in 1676. 

19. Susanna, daughter of Samuel 16 and Susanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, 
New England, in 1640, married in the town of Bridgewater, 
colony of New Plymouth, New England, on May 3, 1668, the 
Rev. James Keith, born in Scotland, in 1644. She died in the 
town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Massachu- 
setts Bay, on October 16, 1705, aged sixty-five years. He mar- 
ried (2d), in 1707, Mary, widow of Thomas Williams of Taunton, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 449 

Bristol County, proxince of Massachusetts Bay. He died on 
July 23, 1 719, in the town of Bridgewater, aged seventy-six 
years. 

Children by first wife: 

27. janies Keith, born in the town of Brids^rewater on DcccTTi])er 5, i66q. 

28. Joseph Keith, l)orn in the town of Bridgewater on Feljruary 14, 1675. 

29. Samuel Keith, born in tlie town of Bridgewater in 1677. 

30. Timothy Keith, born in the town of Bridgewater in 16S3. 

31. John Keith, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1688. 

32. Josiah Keith, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

33. Margaret Keith, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

34. Mary Keith, born in the town of Bridgewater. 
3.5. Susanna Keith, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

James Keith 27 married Mary . Joseph 28 married Ehzabeth Fol)es, 

l)orn March 20, 1677, daughter of Deacon Edward Fobes. Sainuel 2g married, 
in 1703, Bethiah Fobes, born October ii, 1683, sister to EHzabeth. Timoth}' 
30 married, February i, 17 10, Hannah Fo1)es. born March 31, 1686, died in 
1765, sister to Ehzal^eth and Bcthlah. John 31 married. April iS. 171 1, Han- 
nah Washburn, who died in 1766, daughter of Samuel. Josiah 32 married, 
January 6, 1703, Mary Lathrop, davighter of Samuel. Margaret ^^ married 
/--^^— — Hunt. Mary 34 married E])hraim Howard, son of John. Susanna 35 
married Major Jonathan Howard. 

"Rev. James Keith was l)orn in 1644, educated at Aberdeen, 
Scotland (as tradition says, at the expense of a maiden aunt). 
At the age of 18 he emigrated to this country. Arrixing in 
Boston in 1662, he was introduced to the chureli in I^ridgewater 
by Dr. Increase Mather. He is referred to in the records of the 
, church 'as a student of di\-init\', hax'ing at some com]ictent time 
improved his gifts amongst them, in the work of tlie ministry, 
and having also due approbation, by the testimony of the Rev- 
erend Elders of other churches o( Christ, to whom he was known.' 
His settlement took place February 18, 1664." 

Josiah Keith 32 married, as stated above, Mary Lathroj), daughter of 
Samuel and Sarah (Downer) Lathrop, and granddaughter of Mark Lathrop. 
Josiah Keith, son of Josiah 32, born February 14, 1706, married, in 1730. Ruth 
Manly. Tlicir danghtcr. Miliccnt Kt'ith, born February 7, 1731. died December 
6, 1814, married, July 4, 1753. Benjamin Farris, born August 27, (). S.. 1731. 
died November 18, 1815. Benjamin Parris's descent was as follows: Tliomas 
Parris, of London, England: John Parris, mini.stcr at U.gliorough, England: 

Tliomas Parris, who came to New England in 1(183. '^'"-''l '7.^-- niarried 

Rogers; Thomas Parris, born .May 8, (). S., 1701, married, in 1724, Hannah Gan- 
nett, of Scituate, Mass., born .March 2S, 1702, died August 4. 1770; and the 
cou])le named last had Benjamin, named above. 

Benjamin and .\blicent (Keith) Parris liad a son Josiah, liorn August 30. 

1760, died March 24, 1856, married July 23, 1788, Experience Lowden, born 

April 15, 1768, died January 4, 1832. ' Experience was daughter of Nathaniel 
29 



450 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Lowden, born in Duxbury, April 6, 1743, married, in 1762, Experience Pratt, 
born in 1741, died August 30, 181 3, and granddatighter of Richard Lowden, 
who died abovit 1775, married Mary Ford, of Duxbury. Experience Pratt was 
daughter of Joshua Pratt, who married, in 1728, Experience Nash, and grand- 
daughter of Wilham Pratt, of Abington, Mass. 

Josiah and Experience (Lowden) Parris had a son Virgil Delphine Parris, 
born February 18, 1807, died June 13, 1874, married, December 30, 1833, Colum- 
bia Rawson, born February 27, 1814, and had a son, Edward Lowden Parris, 
born September 3, 1837, married, September 7, 1876, Mary Ida Du Bois, born 
[une 22, 1850, and had children: Marion, born May 22, 1879; Edward Lowden, 
born August 3, 1881, died March 21, 1883; and Edward Lowden, born January 
20, 1887. Mr. Edward Lowden Parris lives in Manhattan, New York City. 

20. Sarah, daughter of Samuel i6 and Susanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts 
Bay, New England, about 1641 ; married, in the town of Bridge- 
water, colony of New Plymouth, New England, on November 7, 
1663, John, son of John and Alice Dean of the town of Taunton, 
colony of New Plymouth, New England, born there about 1639. 
She died in the town of Taunton, Bristol County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, on February i8, 1 716-7, aged seventy-seven 
years, during the prevalence of the "Great Snow," and was 
buried in the graveyard on Summer (or Neck-of-Land) Street, 
Taunton. He died July 9, 1692. He was brother to the wife of 
Josiah 25. According to tradition, John Dean was the first 
white child that was born in the town of Taunton. 

Children : 

36. Samuel Dean, bom in the town of Taunton on January 24, 1667. 

37. Sarah Dean, bom in the town of Taunton on November 9, 1668. 

38. John Dean, born in the town of Taunton on July 26, 1670. 

39. Mehetabel Dean, born in the town of Taunton on October 9, 1671. 

40. John Dean, bom in the town of Taunton on September 18, 1674. 
4L Elizabeth Dean, bom in the town of Taunton on March 15, 1676. 

42. Mary Dean, bom in the town of Taunton on July 15, 1680. 

43. Susanna Dean, bom in the town of Taunton on Augtist 13, 1683. 

44. Israel Dean, born in the town of Taunton on August 4, 1685. 

Sarah 37 married Jonathan Howard, born 1660, son of John and Martha 
(Ha5rward) Howard. John 38 died on August 6, 1670. 

21. Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel 16 and Susanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, bom in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, 
New England, about 1643, married, in the town of Bridge- 
water, colony of New Plymouth, New England, in the spring of 
1663, Richard, son of Nicholas Phillips of the town of Wey- 
mouth, colony of Massachusetts Bay, who probably had married 
in 1659, Mary . 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 451 

Children by first wife: 

Mary Phillips, born in tlu' town of Weymouth on May 21, 1660. 
Mary Phillips, born in the town of Weymouth on May 24, 1661. 
Joshua Phillips, born in the town of Weymouth on May to, 1662. 

Children by second wife : 

45. Nicholas Phillips, born in tlie town of WeyuKuUli on March 30, 1664. 

4G. Elizabeth Phillips, l)orn in tlic town of Weymouth on November 27, 1665. 

47. Richard Phillips, born in the town of Weymouth on October 20, 1667. 

48. Samuel Phillips, bcn-n in the town of Weymouth on May 7, 1670. 

Richard Phillips, of the town of Weymouth, the husband of 
Elizabeth, took the freeman's oath on May 8, 1678. 

22. Samuel, vSon of Samuel 16 and Susanna (Orcutt) Edson, 
born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, New 
England, in 1645; married, in the town of Bridgewater, colony 
of New Plymouth, New^ England, in 1678, Susanna, daughter of 
Nicholas and Susanna (Shaw) Byram, l)orn in the town of Wey- 
mouth, colon}^ of Massachusetts Bay, in 1648. He died in the 
town of Bridgewater, Plymc^uth County, ])ni\ince of Massachu- 
setts Bay, on April 10, 17 19; and she in the same place, on 
March 12, 1741-2. 

Children : 

49. Susanna, born in the town of Bride^cwater on January 15, 167Q. 

50. Elizabeth, born in the town of Brid_E;ewater on August 29, 16.S4. 

51. Samviel, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 14, i6qo. 

The will made by the father, on March 16, 171Q, was pro- 
bated on February i, 1720. His daughter Susanna and son 
Samuel were li\'ing at the time of the making of the will, I-^hza- 
beth 50, the wife of Samuel I'ackard, having died in i7i(). By 
the will of tlie mother, made on (Jctober 4, 17,^2, Samuel inher- 
ited the house she had built after the decease of his father. 

23. Mary, daughter of Sannicl i() and Susanna (Orcutt) Ed- 
son, born in tlie town of Salem, colony of Ahissachusetts Bay, 
New England, about 1647, married there Septeml)cr 10, 1676, 
Nicholas, son of Nicholas and vSusanna (Shaw) l^yram, liorn in 
the town of Wevmoutli, colon\- of MassatJuisctts Bay. 'I'licy 
both died in 1727. 

Children : 

52. Bethiah Byram, born October 27, 167S. 

53. Margaret Byram, l)orn Februarj' 26, 16S0. 

54. Mehetabel Byram, born September 28. 16S3. 

54a. (A son) Bryam, born January iS, 16S5, died March kj, 16S6. 

55. Nicholas Byram, l)orn March i r, 16S7. 



452 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

56. Mary Byrani, born March ii, i6go. 

57. Ebenezer Byrani, born October 2, 1692. 

58. Susanna Byram, born January 15, 1695. 

59. Josiah Byrain, born May 3, 1698. 

60. Joseph Byrani, born January 18, 1701. 

Bethiah Byrani 52 died November 20, 1685. Margaret 53 died November 
20, 1685. Mehetabel 54 married, December 3, 1701, Ehsha Allen, born in 1679, 
son of Samuel and Sarah (Patridge) Allen. Nicholas 55 married, in 1708, Anne 
Snell, daughter of Thomas and Martha (Harris) Snell. Mary 56 married, Feb- 
ruary 7, I 71 1, Major Edward Howard, born in 1697, son of John. Ebenezer 57 
married, in 1714, Hannah Hayward, born in 1691, daughter of Deacon Joseph. 
Susanna 58 married, October 18, 171 1, Captain Jonathan Bass, baptized in 
1697, son of Deacon Samuel. Josiah 59 married, in 1720, Hannah Richard of 
Plympton, Mass. Joseph 60 married, May 13, 1724, Martha Perkins, Ijorn in 
1704, daughter of Deacon David. 

24. Joseph, son of Samuel 16 and Susanna (Orcutt) Edson, 
born in the town of Salem, colony of Massachusetts Bay, about 
1649; married (ist), in 1678, Experience Field of Providence, 
colony of Rhode Island, New England. She died in the town of 
Bridgewater, Plymouth County, colony of New Plymouth, New 
England, on November 2, 1685; and he married there (2d), 
November 2, 1686, Mary, daughter of George Turner. He died 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, on October 3, 1711. 

Children by first wife : 

61. Joseph, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1679. 

62. Josiah, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1682. 

63. Experience, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 6, 1685. 

Children by second wife : 

64. Benjamin, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1687. 

65. Samuel, born in the town of Bridgewater on Atigust 28, 1689. 

66. Mary, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1691. 

67. Susanna, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1693. 
68. /" Timothy, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1694. 

Experience 63 died young. 

An inventory of his estate was taken on November iq, 1711. 
The widow, as administratrix, made oath, on February 15, 17 12, 
that it was a true one. 

25. Josiah, son of Samuel 16 and Susanna (Orcutt) Edson, 
born in Duxbury Plantation, colony of New Plymouth, New 
England, in 1651; married, in 1673, i^"* the town of Taunton, 
colony of New Plymouth, Elizabeth, daughter of John and Alice 
Dean of that town, born there in 1650. He died in the town of 
Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Massachusetts Bay, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 453 

on October 4, 1734, in llic eighty-fourlli year of his age; and she, 
in the same place, on November 25, 1737, in the eighty-sixth year 
of her age, without offspring. Tlicir remains are entombed in 
the old graveyard near the Unitarian ("hnrcli, tnwn of Ihidge- 
water, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. 

"Justice" Edson, by liis will made September 5, 1733, l)e- 
queathed a great ]xirt of his ])ropcrty to the wife and cliildren of 
his nephew, Captain Josiah l^^dson. 

26. Bethiah, daughter of Samuel 16 and Susanna fOrrutt) 
Edson, bom in Duxbury Plantation, colony of New IM\-moulh, 
New England, about 1653; married, in the town of Bridgewater, 
colony of New Plymouth, on December 17, 1676, Ivzra, son of 
Walter and Eleanor , (Strong) Dean, of the town of Taunton, 
colony of New Plymouth. He died between ()ctol)er 28, 1727, 
and February 15, 1732. 

Children : 

()9. Bethiah Dean, liom on October 14, \(iTj. 

70. Ezra Dean, born on OctoTier 14, 1680. 

71. vSamuel Dean, born on April 11, 16S1. 

72. Seth Dean, born on June 3, 16S3. 

73. Margaret Dean. 

74. Ephraini Dean. 

The first daughter, Bethiah 69, died on .\ovenilii-r 27, ifi/Q. The second 
son, Samuel 71, died on February 16, 1682-3. 

49. Susanna, daughter of Samuel 22 antl Susanna (^Byram) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, colony of New Ply- 
mouth, New England, on January 15, 1678-9; married (ist). in 
1699, John, son of John and Sarah (Mitchell) Hayward, born on 
April 20, 1667. He died in 1705, and she married (2d), in 1 700, 
Elihu, son of Elihu and Ann l>rett. She dieil in the town of 
Bridgewater in 1743, and he also died there in 1745. 

Children by first husband : 

75. Susanna Ilavward, Ixirn in the town of Bridgewater in 1690. 
70. Sarah Hayward, born in the town nf Bridgewater in 1703. 

Children by second husband : 

77. John Brett, born in 1707. 

78. Anne Brett, boi-n in r 7 10. 
70. Bethiah Brett, l)orn in 1714. 
SO. Elizal)eth Brett. 

50. Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel 22 and Susanna (iiyram) 
Edson, born in the town of 15ritlgewater, colony of Now Ply- 
mouth, New England, on August 29, 1084; married ihere. un 



454 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

May 24, 1705, Samuel, son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Lathrop) 
Packard. They both died in 17 16. 
Children : 

81. Sanuiel Packard, born in 1707. 

82. Bcthiah Packard. 

83. Paul Packard, l)orn in 17 14. 

84. Job Packard, born in 17 16. 

The four children became the heirs of their grandfather. 

51. Samuel, son of Samuel 22 and Susanna (Byram) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, colony of 
New Plymouth, New England, on January 14, 1689-90; married, 
in the town of Taunton, Bristol County, province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, New England, on January i, 1707-8, Mary, daugh- 
ter of Benjamin and Sarah (Williams) Dean, born there on June 
15, 1687. She died in the town of Bridgewater on February 5, 
1770; and he in the same place, on December 27, 1771. Their 
remains are entombed in Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church 
graveyard in Bridgewater. 

Children : 

85. Susanna, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 14, 1708. 

86. Bethiah, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 2, 17 10. 

87. Mary, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 9, 17 12. 

88. Samuel, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 14, 17 14. 

89. Nathan, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 14, 17 16. 

90. Abel, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 19, 17 18. 

91. Obed, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 31, 1720. 

92. Elizabeth, born in the town of Bridgewater on Deceinber 16, 1722. 

93. Silence, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 9, 1726. 

94. Ebenezer, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 7, 1727. 

95. John, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 30, 1729. 

96. Ezra, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 28, 1730. 

97. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 27, 1732. 

Bethiah Edson 86 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on June 26, 1733 . 
By the will of her father, Samuel Edson 51, made on August 23, 1770, her chil- 
dren, she being dead at that time, were bequeathed eight pounds, current 
money. (See Bethiah 26.) Elizabeth Edson 92 married, in the town of Bridge- 
water, on June 6, 1745, Benanviel, son of Benjamin and Hepzibah (Washburn) 
Leach, born in 1718, who had first married, in 1741, Elizabeth Perkins. Eben- 
ezer Edson 94 married (ist), in the town of Bridgewater, on March 4, 1748, 
Jane Griffin. She died, and he married (2d), on April 27, 1758, Hannah, the 
widow of David Leach. Sarah Edson 97 married, in the town of Bridge- 
water, on July 21, 1749, John Cooper. 

61. Joseph, son of Joseph 24 and Experience (Field) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, colony of New Plymouth, New 
England, in 1679; married there, on June 7, 1704, Lydia, daugh- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 455 

ter of Francis and Hannah (Brett) Gary, bom about 1681. She 
died in the town of Bridgewater on January 24, 1762, in the 
eightieth year of her age, and he also died there on August 26, 
1768, in the ninetieth year of his age. Their remains are en- 
tombed in the Powder-House graveyard in West Bridgewater. 
Children : 

9S. Hannah, born in the town of Bridgewater on January i6, 1709. 

99. Lydia, born in the town of Bridt^cwater on January ri, 171 1. 

100. Joseph, born in the town of Bridt^ewater on November iS, 171 2. 

101. Bethiah, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 23, 1715. 

102. John, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 3, 1717. 

103. Daniel, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 21, 1720. 

104. David, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 28, 1722. 

105. Jesse, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 28, 1724. 

106. James, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 20, 1726. 

98. Query. Was this the Hannah who married (ist) Micah Allen; (2d), 
Thomas Phillips? (see Hannah 126). Lydia 99 died on August 18, 1793. Beth- 
iah 1 01 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on Ajiril 26, 1753, Jonathan, 
son of Nicholas and Sarah (Vining) Whitman, Ijorn in 1710. He died in 1778, 
and she died in 1805, without offspring. John 102 married, in the town of 
Bridgewater, on February 7, 1743, Mary, daughter of Matthew and Mary 
(Bacon) Gannett, born there on August 4, 1721. 

Joseph Edson, the father, "resided in what is now called 
West Bridgewater; he was deacon of tlie church for a long time 
before his death ; was a selectman of the town for the years 
1719-22, and through along life uniformly sustained the charac- 
ter of an honest and useful man, a kind and obliging neigh- 
bor, a pious and exemplary Christian." 

62. Josiah, son of Joseph 24 and Experience (Field) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, colony of New Plymouth, New 
England, in 1682, married there (ist), on July 27, 1704, Sarah, 
daughter of Zaccheus and Sarah (Hcnvard) Packard, born in the 
town of Bridgewater on August k). i6()2. She died there on 
February 14, 1754, and he married {21.]}, in the town of Briilge- 
water, on April 3, 1755, Abigail Dean. He died thereon January 
16, 1762, aged eighty years. His and his first wife's remains are 
entombed in the old graveyard in Bridgewater. near the I'ni- 
tarian Church. 

Children : 

107. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 2O, 1705. 
los. Al)iah, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 0. 1706. 

109. Josiah, liorn in the town of Bridgewater on January 24, i70(). 

1 10. Huldah, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 3. 171^. 



456 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

111. Abiezer, born in the town of Bridgewater on June lo, 1715. 

112. Freelove, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 11, 171S. 

113. Elijah, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 28, 1720. 

Josiah Edson 62, the father, made his will on January 4, 1762, 
which was probated on April 1 5 , that year. The devisees of his 
property, as named in it, were; Abigail, his wife; sons Josiah, 
Abiezer, and Elijah; daughters Huldah Howard (Hay ward), and 
Freelove (Fobes) ; granddaughter Sarah Holbrook; grandson 
Abiezer Edson ; and the ' ' children of his deceased daughter 
Abiah." 

64. Benjamin, son of Joseph 24 and Mary (Turner) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, colony of 
New Plymouth, New England, in 1686, married there, on July 
14, 1 715, Joanna, daughter of William and Jane (Washburn) 
Orcutt. He died in the town of Bridgewater on May 13, 1758. 

Children : 

114. Benjamin, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 3, 17 16. 

115. Nathan, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 3, 171S. 

116. Peter, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 17, 1720. 

117. Jacob, born iii the town of Bridgewater on April 16, 1722. 

118. Wilham, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 4, 1724. 

119. Seth, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 24, 1726. 

120. Ichabod, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 26, 1728. 

121. Ebenezer, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 16, 1730. 

122. Joanna, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 9, 1733. 

123. Abigail, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 22, 1736. 

Nathan 115 and Jacob 117 probably died young. Peter 116 married, in 
the town of Bridgewater, on March 28, 1745, Sarah Southworth. He died 
childless in 1750. His will, made on April 27, 1750, was probated on August 
6, 1750- 

Benjamin Edson 64, the father, left West Bridgewater to 
settle in North Bridgewater. In his will, made on January 6, 
1758, probated on July 3, 1758, the names of his sons Nathan 
115, Peter 116, and Jacob 117, do not appear. He devised to 
his son William 118 "a sixteenth part of the saw-mill at the 
forge." 

65. Samuel, son of Joseph 24 and Mary (Turner) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, colony of New 
Plymouth, New England, on August 28, 1687; married there 
(ist), on March 30, 1721, Mehetabel, daughter of Nathaniel and 
Sarah (Hayward) Brett, born in the town of Bridgewater, Ply- 
mouth County, province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, 
on August 12, 1692. She died in East Bridgewater, Plymouth 



I 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 457 

County, on February 20, 1736. Me married (2d), in the town 
of Bridgewater, on March i, 1737, Mehetabel, daughter of Joseph 
and Mehetabel (Dunham) Hayward, born there on May 17, i 701 . 
He died there on January 7, 1 749 ; and she on February 28, 1776. 
Children by first wife : 

124. Samuel, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 2, 1721-2.' 

125. Nathanieb l)orn in the town of Bridgewater on May 5, 1728. 
Samuel 124 died unmarried in the year 1800. 

Samuel Edson, the father, resided with his family in East 
Bridgewater. 

66. Mary, daughter of Joseph 24 and Mary (Turner) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, colony of 
New Plymouth, New England, in i6gi; married there, on May 
23, 1 7 16, John, son of Samuel and Sarah (Downer) Lathrop, born 
October i6, 1687. She died in 1779. 

Children : 

126. Mary Lathrop, bom October 21, 1720. 

127. Sarah Lathrop, born January 26, 1724. 

128. Susanna Lathrop, bom October 12, 1726. 

Mary Lathrop 126 died unmarried. Sarah 127 married, October 16, 1755, 
in Bridgewater, Mass., Alexander Kingman. Susanna i 28 married, in 1747, in 
Bridgewater, Theophilus Howard, born in 1724, son of Ephraim. 

67. Susanna, daughter of Joseph 24 and Mary (Turner) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
colony of New^ Plymouth, New England, in 1693 ; married there, 
on April 2, 1723, Solomon, son of Isaac and Abigail (Leavitt) 
Johnson, bom in 1695. He died in 1771 and she in 1779. Abi- 
gail was widow of Lazell. 

Children : 

129. Susanna Johnson, born December 23, 1723. 

130. Seth Johnson, born May 15, 1733. 

131. Josiah Johnson, bom September 15, 1735. 

132. Nathan Johnson, bom April 13, 1738. 

133. Mary Johnson, born January 13, 1740. 

Susanna Johnson 129 married, in 1747, Jonathan Lathroii. Josiah 131 
married Azuba Gary, bom in 1740, daughter of Ephraim. Mary 133 married, 
in 1 76 1, James Lovell. 

68. Timothy, son of Joseph 24 and Mary (Turner) Edson, 
born in the town of I^ridgewater, Plymoutli County, colony of 



' This date we should call 1722. The ecclesiastical and legal year in Eng- 
land until 1752 began on Lady's Day, March 25th; but continental usage and 
popular usage in England and in the British provinces made the year to begin 
January ist. Hence the double year. 



458 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

New Plymouth, New England, in 1694; married there, on Feb- 
ruary 10, 1 719, Mary, daughter of Joseph and Hannah (Dunham) 
Alden, bom in the town of Bridgewater on April 10, 1699. He 
died in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, New England, on September 9, 1775 ; and she also died 
there on January 20, 1782. 
Children : 

134. Hannah, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 10, 1720. 

135. Timothy, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 19, 1722. 

136. Anna, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1723. 

137. Abijah, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1725. 

138. Jonathan, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1728. 

139. Mary, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 10, 1730. 

The family lived in that part of the town of Bridgewater 
known as East Bridgewater, near Shaw's Mills, and removed in 
1748 to the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, New England. 

On March 31, 1748, James Pease, of the town of Stafford, 
sold to Timothy Edson, of the town of Bridgewater, one hundred 
acres of land in the town of Stafford, for ten hundred and thirty 
pounds. 

On April 6, 1748; Ebenezer Metcalf, of the town of Lebanon, 
New London County, colony of Connecticut, sold to Timothy 
Edson, of th^xown of Bridgewater, forty-four and three-fourths 
acres of land for five hundred pounds. 

On September 28, 1748, Seth Payne sold to Timothy Edson, 
of Stafford, fifty-two acres of land lying south of a highway run- 
ning "from Broad Street to David Orcutt's mill," for five hun- 
dred and eighty pounds. — Records of the Toiun of Stafford, Book 
II., pp. 207, 208, 231, in the office of clerk of the town, in Staf- 
ford, Conn. 

85. Susanna, daughter of Samuel 51 and Mary (Dean) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on December 14, 1708; mar- 
ried there, on June 17, 1736, Samuel, son of Samuel and Eliza- 
beth Hayward, boni in 1706. 

Children : 

140. Samuel Hayward. 

141. (A daughter) Hayward. 

142. Elizabeth Hayward. 

143. Abigail Hayward. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 459 

87. Mary, daughter of Samuel 51 and Mary (Dean) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on March y, 1712; married 
there, (ist) on July 4, 1728, George, son of Nathaniel Packard. 
He died, and she married (2d), in 1740, Jonathan Mehurin. He 
died in 1757. 

Children by first husband : 

144. George Packard. 

14.5. Jonathan Packard. 

146. Lydia Packard. 

147. Rebecca Packard. 

148. Ichabod Packard. 

Child by second husband: 

149. Ephraim Mehurin. 

88. Samuel, son of Samuel 51 and Mary (Dean) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, ])rovince of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, New England, on March 14, 1714; married there, 
on September 26, 1738, Martha, daughter of Nathan and Martha 
(Leonard) Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater, on Decem- 
ber 10, 1 71 7. He died in the town of Bridgewater. Plymouth 
County, Mass., on February 25, 1801 ; and she, in the same place, 
on April 15, 1803. Their remains are entombed in Trinity 
(Episcopal) Church graveyard in Bridgewater. 

Children : 

150. Martha, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 3, 1740. 

151. Samuel, born in the town of Bridgewater on July iS, 1742. 

152. Eunice, Ijorn in the town of Bridgewater on December 10, 1744. 

153. Lois, born in the town of Bridgewater on June iS, 1746. 

154. Jonah, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 10, 1751. 

155. Elizabeth, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 25, 1753. 

156. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 8, 1755. 

157. Noah, born in tlie town of Bridgewater on July 6, 1756. 
15S. Hiddah, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 24, 175S. 
159. Zilpah, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 15, 1760. 

Martha Edson 150 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on December 27. 
1770, Daniel Carr. Eunice Edson 152 married, in 1700, j'lhn C'liamberlain of 
Westmoreland. Lois Ed.son 153 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on .May 
24, 1765, Jacob Staples of Taunton. Elizabeth Edson 155 married, on July 22. 
1784, Andrew White of Middleborough. Sarah Ed-son 156 married, in the town 
of Bridgewater, on October 8, 1778, 'rinidthy Richards of Dcdhani. lluldali 
Edson 158 married, on May 2, 1782, Thomas Pope; child, Henry. 

89. Nathan, son of Samuel 51 and Marv (Dean) Etls(-)n. horn 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, ]irovinco of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, New England, on Marcli 14, 1 7 !(>; marrieil there. 



46o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

on February 27, 1738, Mary, daughter of Jonathan and Lydia 
(Leavitt) Sprague, born in the town of Bridge water on May 4, 
1722. He died there in 1751, and his widow, Mary, was ap- 
pointed administratrix. She rendered her final account as 
"Mary Edson," October 7, 1765. 
Children : 

160. Nathan, born in the town of Bridgewater in 173Q. 

161. Sarah. 

162. Mary. 

163. (A daughter.) 

164. (A son.) 

Sarah 161 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on January 31, 1760, Solo- 
mon, son of Solomon and Lydia (Sprague) Perkins, born in 1737. The third 

daughter, 163, married Kendall, and lived near Black River, in Jefferson 

County, N. Y. The second son, 164, settled in New Orleans, La., about 181 2. 

90. Abel, son of Samuel 51 and Mary (Dean) Edson, born in 
the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, New England, on January 19, 17 17-8; married 
there, in 1739, Margaret, daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth 
(Hains) Conant, bom in the town of Bridgewater on June 3, 
1722. 

Children : 

165. Rachel, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 13, 1744. 

166. Abel, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 16, 1750. 

^ , '. , r born in the town of Bridgewater on March 2, i7i;4. 

168. Bethiah, f * - /ot 

169. Daniel, ), -.r,... r-o-j ^ ^ ■■, . 
,-„ T^,. , , h born m the town 01 Bridgewater on April 12, 17S0. 

170. Ehzabeth, J " 1 - / .-> 

171. Keziah, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 7, 1758. 

172. Riifus, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 30, 1765. 

Abel 166 married in the town of Bridgewater, on May 2, 1771, Elizabeth, 
daughter of William and Bethiah Trask, born there in 1750. Levi 167 married 
there, in 1774, Sarah, daughter of William and Abigail Hay ward of Raynham, 
bom in 1735. He died of siuallpox on January 20, 1777. Letter of adminis- 
tration on his estate was granted on June 2, 1777, to Joseph Hayward of 
Raynham. Bethiah 168 married, on November 25, 1773, Consider Borden. 
Elizabeth 170 married Rodolphtis Borden of Middleborough. Rufus 172 
married, in 1783, Mary Cole of Middleborough. 

Abel Edson 90, the father, lived near where Alexander Ames 
lived in 1847. 

91. Obed, son of Samuel 51 and Mary (Dean) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, New England, on December 31, 1720; married 
there (ist), on November 11, 1741, Keturah, daughter of Jona- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 461 

tlian and Abigail (Stoughtc^i) Willis, horn in \hv luwn of Bridge- 
water on April 11, 1722. She died there on June 4, 1750; and 
he married (2d), in the town of .Middleborough, Plymouth 
County, on May 2, 1751, Martha Thomas. vShe died in the town 
of Richfield, Otsego County, X. V., on December 6, 1795; and 
he in the same place on September 8, 1804. 
Children by first wife : 

173. Obed, born in the town of Bridgcwater on September 17, 1742. 

174. Jesse, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 24, 1744. 

175. (A datighter), l>orn in the town of Bridgewater on December 12, 1745. 
17(i, Obed, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 2, 1747. 

177. Lewis, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 22, 174S. 

Children by second wife: 

178. Keturah, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 2j^, 1752. 

179. Thomas, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 3, 1753. 

180. Lydia, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 13. 1754. 

181. Silence, born in the town of Bridgewater on Septeml)er 14, 1756. 

182. Isaac, born in the town of Bridgewater on Feljruary 2, 1758. 

The son Obed 173 died on December ro, 1742; and the first daughter, 
175, on December 13, 1745. Silence 181 married, in the town of Tauntun. 
Bristol County, Massachusetts, on October 18, 1782, James TrupweH. Lsaae \/'*f>^'^ 
Edson 182 died on March 28, 1800. 

98. Silence, daughter of Samuel 51 and Mary ( Dean) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth Comity, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on November 9, 1726, married 
there (ist), on October 6, 1746, Nehemiah, son of Daniel and 
Mary (Harris) Packard, l)orn in 1 727. He died, and she married, 
(2d) in 1758, Josiah, son of James and Experience (Hayward) 
Dunbar, born in 1725. vSlie died, and he marrieil, in 1 7(;8, Abi- 
gail Shurtliff. He died in 1800. 

Child bv first husband: 

183. Silence Packard, born in 1750. 

Child by second liusband : 
18 1. Josiah Dunbar, Ijorn in i7C)<>. 

Df). John, son of Samuel 51 and .Mar\- (Dean) l'>dson, born in 
the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, ])rovincc of Massa- 
ehusetls Bay, New England, on Mareli ,:;o, i72(); married there. 
on July 25, r75i, I lannali, daughter < >r Benjamin and .Mehetabel 
(Cafv) Allen, Ixirn in .\i)ril, 1725 or 17,^5. lie died in Boston, in 
the latter ])art of the year 1777, "f small]iox ; and she married, in 
the town of Bridgewater, (»n Mav 25, 1 700, Job. son i)( Job antl 
Rachel Packard, born in 1749. 



462 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Children : 

185. John, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 4, 1752. 

186. Benjamin, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 12, 1754. 

187. Nehemiah, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 15, 1758. 
[ohn Edson 185, the eldest son, inarried, in 1784, Tabitha Keen. 

John Edson 95 lived where Ephraim Edson was living in 1864. 

96. Ezra, son of Samuel 51 and Mary (Dean) Edson, born in 
the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, New England, on July 28, 1730; married there, 
on November 18, 1756, Rebecca, daughter of Captain David and 
Rebecca (Washburn) Johnson, born in 1734. She died in the 
town of Bridgewater on April 23, 1781, in the forty-seventh year 
of her age; and he also there on February 19, 1794. Their 
graves are in Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church graveyard in 
Bridgewater. 

Children : 

188. Robert, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 24, 1757. 

189. Ezra, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 13, 1759. 

190. Mary, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 15, 1760. 

191. Rebecca, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 26, 1762. 

192. Lavina, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 24, 1765. 

193. Libeus, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 27, 1769. 

194. Ebenezer, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 9, 1772. 

195. Hannah, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 25, 1774. 

196. Cyrus, born in the town of Bridgewater on August 16, 1777. 

197. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 18, 1780. 

Robert 188 married, in Bridgewater, on June 6, 1782, Mary, daughter of 
Josiah and Mary (Dunham) Hayward. Rebecca 191 married, on June 21, 
1787, Amos Fisher of Vermont. 

Ezra Edson 96, the father, lived in the town of Bridgewater, 
where, in 1864, Simeon Taylor was living. Letters of adminis- 
tration on his estate were granted in 1 794 to his children, Hannah, 
Sarah, and Cyrus Edson of Bridgewater. 

100. Joseph, son of Joseph 61 and Lydia (Cary) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on November 18, 1712; mar- 
ried there, in 1739, Abigail Forrest. She died in 1775. 

Children : 

198. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on August 9, 1739. 

199. Daniel, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 16, 1741. 

200. Abigail, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 5, 1743. 

201. Mary, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 5, 1746. 

202. John, bom in the town of Bridgewater on May 20, 1748. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AXI) AMERICA 463 

203. Isaiah, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 14, 1750. 

204. Abigail, born in the town of Bridgewater on A])ril 7, 1752. 

Sarah Edson 198 died on October 10, 1775; Al)i,<Tail 200. on An<(u.st 16, 
1748; Mary 201, on January 27, 1753: Isaiah 20,5, on Fel)ruary 5, 1753, and 
Abigail 204, on December 25, 176S. 

104. David, son of Joseph 61 and Lydia (Cary) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymoiitli County, province of ^las- 
sachusetts Bay, New England, on A])ril 28, 1722; married there, 
(ist) on January i, 1746, Susanna, daughter (A' Matthe>A- and 
Mary (Bacon) Gannett, born in tlie town of Ilridgewater, on 
November 13, 1723. vShe died tliere on Xox-cinbcr 8, 1755; and 
he married there (2d) on December 8, 1756, Sarali Southvvorth, 
widow of Peter Edson. He died in 1795. 

Children by first wife : 

20.5. Susanna, born in the town of Bridgewater on January lo, 174S. 

206. Mehetabel, born in the town of Bridgewater on Julv 31, 1750. 

207. Mehetabel, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 24, i7S3- 

208. Huldah, born in the town o-f Bridgewater on October 25, i 755. 

Children by second wife : 

209. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on vSejitember 14, 1757. 

210. David, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 13, 1759. 

211. Jonathan, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 7. 1761. 

212. (A son), born in the town of Bridgewater on April 5, 1763. 

Susanna 205 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on October 17, i7()8. 
Joshua, son of Daniel and Mehetabel (Byram) Beal of Windsor, born in 1745. 
Mehetabel 206 died on November 8, 1751; Sarah 209, on December 13, 176S: 
Jonathan 211 on December 12, 1768; and the unnamed son, 212, on April 8, 
1763. Mehetabel 207 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on December 21, 
1775, Benjamin Clark of Atliol. Iluldah2o8 married Benjamin Death of 
Montague. 

David Edson, the father, in liis will, made on Januar\- 5, 1 -ji.)^, 
probated on February t, 1796, names as his heirs, Lydia, his 
wife; David, his son; and his daughters, Susanna Beal, Mehet- 
abel Clark, and Huldah Death. 

105. Jesse, son of Joseph 61 and Lydia (Cary) Edson, born in 
the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, New England, on October 28, 1724; married there 
(ist), on March 26, 1754, Lydia (Titus), widow of Robert Pack- 
ard. She died in the town of Bridgewater on januar\- 2t,, 1762. 
in tlie thirty-sixth year of her age; and he inarrird there (2d), 
on January 5, 1764, I\cbecca Pielcher. \\v (bed in llie town iA' 
Bridgewater on November 18, 1783, and his remains were en- 
tombed in the Powder-House graveyard in West Bridgewater. 



464 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Children by first wife : 

213. Joseph, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 26, 1755. 

214. John, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 25, 1760. 

Children by second wife : 

215. Jesse, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 27, 1764. 

216. Rebecca, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 7, 1770. 

Jesse 215 died on August 12, 1768, and his remains were buried in the 
Powder-House graveyard in West Bridgewater. 

On February 2, 1784, letters of administration on the estate 
of the father were granted to his son Joseph. 

106. James, son of Joseph 61 and Lydia (Cary) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, New England, on December 20, 1726; married 
there (ist), on May 11, 1749, Esther, daughter of Josiah and 
Mary (Read) Allen, born about 171 7. She died in the town of 
Bridgewater on April 15, 1794; and he married there (2d), on 
October 24, 1796, Elizabeth Washburn, widow. He died in the 
town of Bridgewater on September 22, 1808. 

Children : 

217. James, born in the town of Bridgewater on July lo, 1750. 

218. Josiah, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 31, 1753. 

219. Barnabas, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 17, 1757. 

James 217 died on March 29, 1769. Barnabas 219 the third son, died in 
the army while serving as a soldier in the War of the Revolution. 

The family, while living in the town of Bridgewater, resided 
on the road leading to South Abington, in the easterly part of 
the town. 

107. Sarah, daughter of Josiah 62 and Sarah (Packard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on February 26, 
1705 ; married, in 1731, Elisha, son of Elisha and Mary (Howard) 
Pierce of Scituate. 

Child: 

220. Sarah Pierce. 

108. Abiah, daughter of Josiah 62 and Sarah (Packard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on April 6, 1706; 
married, in 1728, Samuel, son of Joseph and Hannah '(Dunham) 
Alden of Titicut, born on August 20, 1705. She died, and he 
married, in 1752, Rebecca, daughter of Josiah and Mercy Wash- 
burn, bom in 1 712. He died in 1785. 



221 
222 
223 
224 
225 
226 
227 
228 
229 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 465 

Children : 

Abiah Alden, born in the town of Titicut in 1729. 
Mchctabcl Alden, born in the town of Titicut in 1732. 
Sarah Alden, born in the town of Titicut in 1734. 
Samuel Alden, born in tlie town of Titicut in 1736. 
Josiah Alden, born in the town of Titicut in 1738. 
Simeon Alden, born in the town of Titicut in 1740. 
Silas Alden, born in the town of Titicut. 
Mary Alden, born in the town of Titicut. 
Hosea Alden, born in the town of Titicut. 

The family li^'ed in Titicut. 

109. Josiah, son of Josiah 62 and Sarah (Packard) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province 
of Massachusetts Bay, on January 24, 1709; married there (ist), 
September 13, 1737, Ruth, daughter of Joseph Bailey of Scituate, 
bom on December 4, 1709. She died in the town of Bridge- 
water on May 31, 1743; and he married (2d), in Plympton, in 
1746, Mary, daughter of Judge Daniel Parker, boni on May 15, 
I 710. He married (3d), in 1755, Abigail Dean of Taunton, who 
died on January 21, 1788. He died in the British army, in 
camp on Long Island, N. Y., on December 26, 1778. 

Children by first wife : 

230. Josiah, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 22. 1738. 

231. Caleb, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 13, 1739. 

232. Ruth, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 15, 1741. 

233. Calvin, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 3, 1743. 

Children by second wife : 

234. Daniel, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 3, 1747. 

235. Mary, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 13, 1749. 

Caleb 231 died on September 24, 1754; Ruth 232, on February 15, 1756; 
Calvin 233, on April 2, 1743; and Daniel 234, on July 27, 1747. 

On March i, 1779, letter of administration on tlie estate of 
Josiah Edson, late of Bridgewater, was granted to Hezekiah 
Hooper of Bridgewater. 

110. Huldah, daughter of Josiah 62 and Sarah (i^ickard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth Count >•. 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, 'on May 3, 1713: 
married there, on November 18, 1738, Hezekiah. born m 1707. 
son of Benjamin and Sarah (Aldrich) Hayward. He died on 
April 27, 1790; and she on July 14, 1800. 

Children : 

236. Elijah Hayward, born in the town of Bridgewater in i 741 . 
30 



466 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

237. Htildah Hayward, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1744. 

238. Hezekiah Hayward, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1746. 

239. Ziba Hayward, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1749. 

240. Edward Hayward, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1753. 

111. Abiezer, son of Josiah 62 and Sarah (Packard) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, on June lo, 1715; married (ist), on Novem- 
ber 17, 1737, in Bridgewater, Sarah, daughter of Samuel and 
Abial (Lazell) Lathrop of West Bridgewater, born in 1717. She 
died, and he married (2d), in 1740, Jael Bennett of Middle- 
borough, in Plymouth County. She died, and he married (3d), 
in the town of Bridgewater, on November 15, 1744, Mary, daugh- 
ter of Samuel and Anne Packard, born in 1725. She died there 
on November 27, 1778; and he married in 1781 (4th), Catharine 

Williams, widow, first of Doctor Lunt and next of Earl of 

Taunton. Captain Abiezer Edson died in the town of Bridge- 
water on July 24, 1 79 1. 

Children, by second wife: 

241. Abiezer, born in the town of Bridgewater. •=- ^^ °'^' '"' "^'^'^ 

By third wife : 

242. Abiel, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

243. Adam, bom in the town of Bridgewater. 

244. Rodolphus, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1753. 

245. Polycarpus, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1754. 

246. Joel, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

Joel Edson 246 had a collegiate education and received the degree of Master 
of Arts in 1784 from Yale College; practised as a physician in Albany, N. Y. 
He married, on December 29, 1774, Lucy Leonard of Middleborough. 

112. Freelove, daughter of Josiah 62 and Sarah (Packard) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on October ii, 
1 7 18; married there, on March 5, 1739, Josiah, son of John and 
Abigail (Robinson) Fobes, born in 17 16. He died in 1794, and 
she in 1806. 

Children : 

247. Josiah Fobes, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1740. 

248. Perez Fobes, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1742. 

249. Jason Fobes, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1745. 

250. Abigail Fobes, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1747. 

251. Silvia Fobes, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1749. 

252. Ezra Fobes, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1751. 

253. Freelove Fobes, bom in the town of Bridgewater in 1754. 

254. Alpheus Fobes, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1756. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 467 

255. Joseph Fobcs, ) . 

256. John Fobes, *'"' '" '^' ^'"''" "^ Bndgcwalci- in 1758. 

257. Nathan Fobes, born in the town of Bridgcwatcr in 1761. 

113. Elijah, M.D., son of Josiah 62 and Sarah (Packard) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of ]\Iassachusetts Bay, New England, on October 28, 
1720; married there, on April 21, 1741, Anne, daughter of Sam- 
uel and Anne Packard, born in 1723. He died in 1762, and Ins 
widow married in the town of Bridgewater on February 11, i 771, 
Jonathan Wood. 

Children : 

258. EUjah, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

259. Calvin, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

260. Daniel, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1744. 

261. Hosea, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

262. Caleb, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

263. Silvester, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

264. Anne, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

265. Olive, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

266. Susanna, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

267. Ruth, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

268. Marshall, bom in the town of Bridgewater. 

Daniel 260 was a resident of Ashburnhani ii: 1775, and he is found there a 
short time subsequently. 

Caleb 262 married, April 15, 1783, in Taunton, Bristol County, Mass.. Sarah 
Dean of that plaee. He was a Revolutionar}' soldier from Groton, aged twenlv, 
in Captain Henry Dearborn's eompany in Colonel B. Arnold's detachment. As 
from Cockermouth, he joined the sixth company of Stark's command, to which 
he had belonged before. He was a fifer. 

Susanna 266 married, September 28, 1773, Gershom Richmond. 

Elijah 113, the father, was a physician. He made his will 
November 17, 1762, and it was ])robated on December 6, 1762. 

114. Benjamin, son of Benjamin 64 and Joanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plyinoulli Cnunty. 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on October 3, 
1716; married, in Abington, ])rovince of Massachusetts Bay, on 
October i, 1739, Ann, dauglitcr of Richard and Susanna (White) 
Thayer, born in 17 18. • 

Child: 

269. Jacob. 

118. William, son of Benjamin 64 and Joanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, Xew li^ngland, on Feliruary 4. 
1723-4; married there, on November 27, 1754. Martha, daugh- 



468 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

ter of Robert and Abigail (Keith) Howard, born in the town of 
Bridgewater on October 27, 1729. He died there on February 
13, 1800. 
Children : 

270. Keziah, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 30, 1755. 

271. Robert, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 25, 1757. 

272. A daughter, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 25, 1759. 

273. Seth, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 6, 1761. 

274. Martha, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 3, 1763. 

275. Abigail, born in the town of Bridgewater on August 16, 1765. 

276. WiUiam, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 17, 1767. 

277. Jennet, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1769. 

Keziah Edson 270 married John Harkness. The unnamed daughter, 272, 
died on April 17, 1759. Martha Edson 274 married, on March 2, 1786, Philip, 
son of George and Abigail (Esty) Packard, born in 1763. Abigail Edson 275 
married, in the town of Bridgewater, on December 20, 1787, John Harris. 

William Edson, senior, 1 18, by the will of his father, Benjamin, 
made January 6, 1758, became the devisee of "a sixteenth part 
of the saw-mill at the forge." In the will of William Edson of 
Bridgewater, yeoman, probated on March 10, 1800, he mentions 
his wife Martha; sons Robert, Seth, William; daughters Kezia, 
wife of John Harkness ; Matty, wife of Philip Packard ; Abigail, 
wife of John Harris; and "Jenny." 

1 19. Seth, son of Benjamin 64 and Joanna (Orcutt) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on April 24, 1726, married 
Irene Howard. 

Children : 

278. Levi, bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Connecti- 

cut, on March 27, 1752. 

279. Joanna, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, on September 13, 1754. 

280. Rhoda, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, on March i, 1757. 

281. Benjamin, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, on January 26, 1758. 

282. Seth, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Connecti- 

cut, on January 12, 1761. 

283. Irene, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, on October 7, 1765. 
Rhoda Edson 280 married, in the town of Stafford, on May 13, 1777, Aaron 
Heath. 

On October 30, 1747, Joseph Masey of the town of Wood- 
stock, Windhami County, colony of Connecticut, sold to Seth 



1 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 469 

Edson, of the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province 
of Massachusetts Bay, five acres of land in the town of Staff c^rd, 
for one hundred and seventy pounds, adjoining Josiah Bloggett's 
and William Orcutt's land. 

On September 7, 1748, Josiah Bloggett of the town of Staf- 
ford, sold to Seth Edson of that town, one half acre of land, for 
five pounds. 

On November 17, 1750, William Edson, of the town of Bridge- 
water, sold to his brother Seth, of the town of Stafford, four acres 
of meadow land, at the north end of the Cedar Swamp, in that 
town, for seventy pounds. 

On January 6, 1751, David Orcutt, of the town of Stafford, 
sold to Seth Edson, of that town, nineteen and one half acres of 
land, for two hundred and ten pounds. {Records of the Town of 
Stafford, Book II., pp. 191, 301, 350, 351, in the office of the 
Town Clerk, in Stafford, Conn.) 

120. Ichabod, son of Benjamin 64 and Joanna (Orcutt) Ed- 
son, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, prov- 
ince of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on September 26, 

1728, married there, on July 19, 1759, Jemima, daughter of 
Deacon James and Jemima (Keith) Packard, borri on August 8, 

1729. She died in the town of Bridgewater, on January 14, 1803, 
and he also there on July 6, 181 1. 

Children : 

284. Relief, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 8, 1761. 

285. Joanna, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 20, 1765. 

Letter of administration on estate of Ichabod Edson 120, late 
of Bridgewater, yeoman, was granted on August 5. 181 r, to 
Thomas Packard, the husband of Joanna Edson. 

121. Ebenezer, son of Benjamin 64 and Joanna (Orcutt) Ed- 
son, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, prov- 
ince of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on October 16, 1730, 
married (ist), in that place, on November 7, 175 i, \ak-\\ daughter 
of Seth and Mercy (Bryant) Packard, bom on July 20, 1731. 
She died, and he married (2d), in 1790, Mary, daughter of Itlben- 
ezer and Mary (Nightingale) Warren, born on July 0, 1748. Ho 
died in 1829. 

Children : 

286. Nathan, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 9, i753- 



470 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

287. Ebenezer, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 5, 1755. 

288. Lucy, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 18, 1757. 

289. Levina, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 8, 1760. 

290. Peter, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

291. Ziba, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

Ebenezer Edson 287 married, on November 23, 1780, Martha Fobes; Lucy 
Edson 288 married, on April 3, 1788, Alexander Thayer of Braintree; Levina 
289 married Samuel Perkins; Peter 290 married, on September 6, 1784, Rebecca 
Randall. He was a soldier in the War of the Revokition. Ziba Edson 291 
married, on November 29, 1787, Timothy West. 

In the expedition against Louisburg, Cape Breton Island, 
1745, was Ebenezer Edson [121], private, James Smith, Lieut., 
in the 8th Mass. Reg't. (N. E. Hist. & Biog. Record, vol. xxv., 
p. 263.) 

In the will of Ebenezer Edson of Bridgewater, yeoman, made 
on May 26, 182 1, and probated on February 16, 1829, he names 
his wife Mary; his daughter Lucy Thayer 288; grandson Ben- 
jamin, son of Ebenezer Edson 287, deceased; grandson Allen, 
son of Nathan 286; grandson Samuel Perkins, Jr., son of his 
daughter Levina 289 Perkins; his grandson Ebenezer West, 
son of his daughter Ziba 291 West; grandson Alexander Thayer, 
Jr., and granddaughter Lucy Thayer. 

122. Joanna, daughter of Benjamin 64 and Joanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, boni in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on September 9, 
1733, married there, on May 2, 1754, Isaac, son of Mark and 
Dorothy (Whipple) Perkins, born on April 27, 1731. 

Children : 

292. Abraham Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 10, 1755. 

293. Isaac Perkins, bom in the town of Bridgewater on February 20, 1757. 

294. Joanna Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 8, 1761. 

295. Jacob Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on Septeinber 21, 1763. 

The family settled in Titicut. 

123. Abigail, daughter of Benjamin 64 and Joanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, province of Massachu- 
setts Bay, New England, on March 22, 1736, married there, on 
August 17, 1755, Josiah, son of Mark and Dorothy (Whipple) 
Perkins, bom on January 4, 1727/8. He died on August 2, 
1798, and she on September 11, 1825. 

Children : 

296. Mehctabcl Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on August 20, 1756. 

297. Abigail Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 25, 1758. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 471 

298. Mark Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on December ig, 1760. 

299. Josiah Perkins, born in the town of Bridi^ewater on October 9, 1762. 

300. Sarah Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 7, 1766. 

301. Benjamin Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 5, 176S. 

302. Silvia Perkins, born in tlic town of Bridgewater on September 30, 1769. 

303. Jacob Perkins. 

304. Shepard Perkins. 

125. Nathaniel, son of Samuel 65 and Mehetabel (Brett) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on May 5, 1728, 
married there, on March 29, 1758, Joanna, daughter of David 
and Joanna (Hayward) Snow, born in 1735. He died in the 
town of Bridgewater, on March 19, 1784, and she in 1802. 

Children : 

305. Mehetabel, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 24, 1760. 

306. Joel, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 4. 1763. 

307. Eunice, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 4, 1765. 

308. Joanna, born in the town of Bridgewater on July iS, 1767. 

309. Nathaniel, born in the town of Bridgewater on Avigust 4, 1769. 

310. Lydia, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 23, 1771. 
311 Huldah, born in the town of Bridgewater on August 29, 1774. 

312. Nathaniel, bom in the town of Bridgewater on May 9, 1777. 

Joanna Edson 30S died on Janvtary 27, 1S46; Nathaniel 309, on October 
4, T770; and Huldah 311, on February 28, 1793. 

Letter of administration on the estate of Nathaniel Edson, 
late of Bridgewater, yeoman, was granted on May 2, 1785, to 
Joel Edson of Bridgewater. 

134. Hannah, daughter of Timothy 66 and .Mary (Aldcn) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on October 10. 
1720, married (ist), in that place, on February 23, i736/'7, 
Micah, son of Josiah and Mary (Read) Allen, born in 1708. He 
died, and his widow married (2d), in 1747, Thomas, son of Ben- 
jamin Phillips. She died in 1768. 

(But see Hannah 98, daughter of Josepli and Lydia (Cary) 
Edson.) 

Children, by first husband: 

313. Mary Allen, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1737. 
31 1. Micah Allen, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1740. 

315. Jo.seph Allen, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1742- 

316. Daniel Allen, bom in the town of Bridgewater in .174,^ 

L35. Timothy, son of Timothy 66 and Mary (Alden) lulson. 
born in llie town of Ilridgewatcr, Plymouth County, province of 



472 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Massachusetts Bay, New England, on June 19, 1722, married, on 
March 27, 1745, Lydia, the eldest daughter of John and Lydia 
(Lincoln) Joy, born in the town of Hingham, Plymouth County, 
on October 5, 1725. She died in the town of Randolph, Orange 
County, Vermont, on August 23, 1806. 
Children: 

317. John, born in the town of Bridgewater, on .September 15, 1746. 

318. Huldah, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 13, 1748. 

319. |ohn, bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Connecti- 

cut, on September 16, 1750. 

320. Huldah, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, April 23, T752. 

321. Timothy, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford Cotinty, colony of Con- 

necticut, March 26, 1754. 

322. Calvin, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, July 14, 1756. 
323.-^ Josiah, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticvit, in 1758. 

324. Eliab, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticvit, on October 27, 1760. 

325. Lydia, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, March 4, 1763. 

326. Relief, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, March 16, 1765. 

327. Mary, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, June 22, 1767. 
John 317 and Huldah 318, the first two children, died in the town of Stafford 
on December i, 174Q. John 319 died there on September 6, 1775. Lydia 325 
died in 1801. Relief 326 married, in the town of Stafford, on September 4, 1788, 
Sylvanus Bloggett, born January 10, 1765, died in August, 1853. She died in 
the town of Randolph, Orange Cotinty, Vt., on August 22, 1S23. They had 
one child, Orinda Bloggett (or Blodgett) , who married, December 2g, 181 8, Elias 
Carpenter. Mary 327 married in the town of Staffoi'd, on October 28, 1785, 
Ebenezer Johnson. He died there, April 2, 1S17, and she on January 8, 1848. 

On March 26, 1753, Timothy Edson 127, of the town of 
Stafford, sold to Timothy Edson, junior, of that town, twenty 
acres of land, for four hundred pounds. 

On December 31, 1753, Seth Harney, of the town of Taunton, 
Bristol County, province of Massachusetts Bay, sold to Timothy 
Edson, junior, of the town of Stafford, four acres and a quarter 
of land lying in that town, a little distance southerly from the 
meeting-house upon the west side of Broad Street, for one hun- 
dred and eighty pounds. {Records of the Town of Stafford, Book 
II., pp. 28, 236, in the office of the Town Clerk, in Stafford, Conn.) 

137. Abijah, son of Timothy 66 and Mary (Alden) Edson, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 473 

born in the town of Bridgewater, IM\mouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, in 1725, married there, on 
September 29, 1747, Susanna, daughter of James and Ruth 
(Shaw^) Snow, born in i72g. 
Children : 

328. Abijah, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, on April lo, 1748. 

329. Nathan, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, in April, 1750. 

330. Samuel, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 

necticut, in 1752. 
On December 7, 1778, Nathan Edson 329 took the oath of fidelity to the 
State of Connecticut as required by law. He was a soldier of the Revolutionary 
War. Under the Act of Congress, of March 18, 181 8, he was enrolled, on 
September 16, 1818, a Revolutionary War pensioner, to receive annually 
ninety-six dollars from April 7, 181 8, having served in the Second Connecticut 
Continental Line Regiment. He died in Caledonia County, Vermont, on March 
16, 1S28. 

On September 3, 1753, Timothy Edson 66 gave to his son 
Abijah 137, fifty acres of land lying on the west side of the Willa- 
mantic River. {Records of the Toicii of Stafford, Tolland County, 
Connecticut, Book II., p. 346, in the office of the Town Clerk, 
in Stafford, Conn.) 

138. Jonathan, son of Timothy 66 and Mary (Aldcn) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgew^ater, IMymouth County, province 
of Massachusetts Bay, New England, in 1728. married, in the 
town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Connecticut, New 
England, on October 15, 1749, Mehetabel Lilly. He died in 
Whately, Franklin County, Massachusetts, on February 13, 1805, 
and she, also there, on June 20, 1805. 

Children : 

331. Timothy, born in the town of Stafford, colony of Connecticut, in 1750. 

332. Mehetabel, born in the town of Stafford, colony of Connecticut, on May 

II. 1751- 

333. Jonathan, born in the town of Stafford, colony of Connecticut. 

334. Hannah, born in the town of Stafford, colony of Connecticut. 

335. Sarah, born in the town of Stafford, colony of Connecticut, in 1756. 

336. Olive, born in the town of Stafford, colony of Connecticut, on March 10. 

1759- 

337. Amasa, born in tlu' town of Whately, I'ranklin County, province of Mas- 

sachusetts Bay, New England, on April 13, 176,^ 

338. Mary. 

339. Samuel. 

Mehetabel 332 married Martin Graves; Hannah 334 married, on July 22, 
17S2, Paul Belden; Sarah 335 married Deacon Ru.ssell Allis; Olive 336 married 



474 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Thomas Smith; Mary 33S married first Rogers, and second, on March 5, 

1792, John Bardwell; Samuel 339 married Miriam Edson. 

Jonathan Edson 138, having married, in the town of Stafford, 
Hartford County, colony of Connecticut, bought, on January 30, 
1752, of John Lindsey of that town five acres of swamp land for 
five pounds. 

On February 12, 1753, Timotliy Edson 66 of the town of 
Stafford gave to his son Jonathan 138 sixty acres of land. 

On February 13, 1753, James Latham of that town sold to 
Jonathan Edson 138, for one hundred pounds, five acres of land. 
{Records of the Town of Stafford, Book II., pp. 327, 352, 353.) 

Jonathan Edson 138 removed from the town of Stafford to 
the town of x\shfield, Franklin County, province of Massachusetts 
Bay, where, in 1764, he represented the town in the General 
Court as a selectman. At the first annual town meeting, on 
March 31, 1766, held for the choice of town officers, he and 
Nathan Chapin were elected wardens. He was named that year 
one of the seventy-one taxable inhabitants of the town. In 
1773, he removed to the town of Whately, in Franklin County, 
and united with the Congregational Church, with which he and 
his wife were in full communion in 1782. He built himself a 
home in Whately, east of the S. C. schoolhouse, on the east side 
of Chestnut Plain Street, about thirty rods north of Cornelia M. 
White's residence, in which he was living at the time of his death. 
The building was torn down about 1825. {History of the Toivyi 
of Whately, Mass., by J. H. Temple, Boston, 1872; History of 
the Town of Whately, Mass., by James M. Crofts, Orange, Mass., 
1899.) 

139. Mary, daughter of Timothy 66 and Mary (Alden) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province 
of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on. April 10, 1730; mar- 
ried, in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, New England, on April 20, 1758, Seth, son of Nathaniel 
Johnson, bom in the town of Haverhill, Essex County, province 
of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on July 12, 1720. She 
died in the town of Stafford, Conn., on August 17, 1790; and he 
in the town of Floyd, Oneida County, N. Y., in 1804. She was 
his second wife. 

Children : ^ ' 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 475 

340. Mary Johnson, born in llic town of Stafford, Connecticut, on February 9, 

1759- 
340a. Sarah John.son. 
340b. Susan Johnson. 

Mary Johnson 340 married, Feljruary 27, 1777. Joseph Converse, born 
December 28, 1754, at Stafford, died December 20, 1826, at Randolph, Vt., 
son of Josiah and Eleanor (Richardson) Converse. 

Sarah 340A married Benjamin Moulton. 

Susan 340B married Salmon Moulton, l)r()thcr of Benjamin. The Moultons 
removed to Floyd, N. Y. 

151. Samuel, son of Samuel 88 and Martha (Perkins) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on July t8, 1742; married 
there, on April 30, 1767, Anna Hall of Raynham. 

Children : 

341. Abigail, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 16, 1768. 

342. Chloe, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 17, 1770. 

343. Anna, born in the town of Bridgewater on July i, 1772. 

344. Samuel, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 11, 1775. 

345. Jane, born in the tow^n of Bridgewater, on November 28, 1778. 

346. Alexander, born in the town of Bridgewater, on July 28. 1781. 

347. Oliver, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 28, 1784. 

348. Hosca, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 3, 1789. 
Abigail Edson 341 married in 1787 Azariah Willis, of Oakham. Anna 

Edson 343 married in 179S John Winnett. 

Samuel Edson 151, the father, ]ia\-ing served in the War of the 
Revolution, was enrolled, under the act of Congress of March 18, 
181 8, a Revolutionary War pensioner, to receive ninety-six 
dollars annually from April 6, 18 18, having served as a quarter- 
master sergeant in the Massachusetts Continental IJnc. Under 
the act of May i, 1820, his name was dropped from the pension 
list. He was then residing in Orange County, Vermont. 

154. Jonah, son of Samuel 88 and Martha (Perkins) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on July 10, 1751; married 
Elizabeth Balch. She died in 1846, in the ninety-sevcntli year 
of her age; and he in 1848. 

Children : 

349. Freeman, born in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, on September 24, 1791. 

350. Cynthia, l)orn probably in Addison County, Vermont, in 1799. 

351. Delana, born probably in Addison County. Vermont, in 180 1. 

352. Elizabeth, born probably in Addison County. Vermont, in 1804. 

353. Chelous, born probably in Addison County, Vermont, in 1806. 

354. Sylvanus, bom probably in Addison County, Vermont, rSo8. 

355. Columbus, born probably in Addison Ct)unty. Vermont, in 1810. 



476 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

356. Chester, born probably in Addison Connty, Vermont, in 1813. 

357. Esther, born probably in Addison County, Vermont, in 1S16. 
Freeman 349 may have been born in a later year. The date of his birth 

was derived from a source different from that of the other children. Columbus 
Edson 355 died in 1880, unmarried. 

Jonah Edson 154 removed from the town of Bridgewater, 
Mass., to Westmoreland, N. H. 

Jonah Edson 154 was in Captain John Giles' camp, of Colonel 
Ashley's regiment of militia, which marched from A¥estmore- 
land on the alarm of June 28, 1777. 

Jonah Edson and wife Elysbeth appear as members of the 
Baptist Church of Lunenburgh, Vt., March 6, 181 1. 

157. Noah, son of Samuel 88 and Martha (Perkins) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on July 6, 1756 ; married (ist), 
in that place, on June 27, 1782, Elizabeth Richards. She died 
in the town of Bridgewater on February 21, 1784; and he mar- 
ried (2d), in that town, on June 21, 1787, Mary, daughter of 
Ebenezer and Mary (Jackson) Willis of Middleborough. She 
died in the town of Bridgewater on January 7, 1 801, in the forty- 
fifth year of her age; and he married there (3d), on October 29, 
1802, Keziah, daughter of Captain Eliakim and Mary (Howard) 
Howard, bom in 1765. She died in the town of Bridgewater on 
February 12, 1840, aged seventy-five years; and he also there, 
on February 11, 1846. 

Child by first wife : 

358. Zoroaster (afterwards Henry), born in the town of Bridgewater on Feb- 

ruary 21 , 1784. 

Children by second wife : 

359. Eliphalet, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 24, 1788. 

360. Noah, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 29, 1790. 

361. Jonah, bom in the town of Bridgewater on March 18, 1792. 

362. Elijah, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 5, 1794. 

363. Ephraim, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 25, 1797. 

364. Jacob, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 30, 1799. 

Children by third wife : 

365. Elizabeth Richards, born in the town of Bridgewater, on August 30, 1803. 

366. Simeon Howard, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 17, 1804. 

367. Nathan, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 11, 1806. 

368. Elizabeth, born in the town of Bridgewater, on April 28, 1809. 
Zoroaster 358 (Henry) married in 181 2, Elizabeth Niles Little, of Marsh- 
field; Eliphalet 359 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on January 27, 1810, 
Mary L., daughter of Nathan and Mary (Johnson) Johnson, and died, in 1859, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND A:\rERICA 477 

in Yarmouth, Mass., when.' Ihcy had hvcd; Noah 360 married, in the town of 
Bridgewater, on June 8, 1S14, Iluldah, daughter of Deacon Joseph and Evmice 
(Joslyn) Kingman, born in lyi)-;. and died in 1851. 'I'liey hved in Iladley, 
Hampshire County, Mass. EHjah 362 married, in 1S18, Nancy Clark, of Plym- 
outh, and died in 1841. Simeon Howard 366 married first Alice, daughter of 
Daniel Bryant, second, Lydia Cheedle. and third, Sarah Cheedle. He moved 
to Vermont, and died there. Elizabeth 36S married Joel Shedd. They live 
in Waltham. Nathan 367 died on November 25, 1825. 

159. Zilpah, daughter of Samuel 88 and Martha (Perkins) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, January 15, 1760; 
married there, on November 12, 1778, Daniel, son u( Daniel and 
Keziah (Willis) Willis, born in 1758. She died in 1821. 

Children : 

369. Keziah Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1779. 

370. Zilpah Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1780. 

371. Susanna Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1782. 

372. Elizabeth Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1784. 

373. Nancy Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1787. 

374. Mary Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in i7(}0. 

375. Roxana Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater n\ 1792. 

376. Daniel E. Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1794. 

377. Cyrus Willis, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1797. 

378. Galen Willis, born in the t(jwn of Bridgewater in 1800. 

160. Nathan, son of Nathan 89 and Mary (Sprague) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, in 1739; married there, on 

September 2, 1766, Mary, dau. of • and Anna (Giffms) 

Hall, born in Ireland in 1 740. He died in the town of Smithfield, 
Madison County, N. Y., on August 16, 1825; and she, in the 
same place, then the town of Stockbridge, on December i 2, 1838. 
Their remains were interred in a burial-plot on Cabin lulson's 
farm on the south edge of the town of Lenox. 

Children : 

379. Anna, born in Petersham, Worcester County, province of Massachusetts 

Bay, on November 14, 1767. 

380. Nathan, born in Petersham. Worcester County, jirovincc of Massachusetts 

Bay, on March 31, 1769. 

381. John, born in Petersham. Worcester County, jirovince of Massachusetts 

Bay, on February i , i 7 7 i • 

382. Willard, born in Petersham, Worcester County, province of .Massachusetts 

Bay, on October 14. 1772. 

383. Alfred, bom in Petersham, Worcester Comity, province of Massachusetts 

Bay, on November 13, 1774- 

384. Barnabas, born in Petersham. Worcester County, jirovince of Massachu- 

setts Bay, on I-\'bruary 27. 177A. 



478 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

385. Mary, born in Petersham, Worcester County, Massachusetts, on March 

24, 177S. 

386. Calvin, born in Petersham, Worcester County, Massachusetts, June 10, 

1780. 

387. Sarah, born in Petersham, Worcester County, Massachusetts, May 14, 

1783- 

388. OHve, born in Petersham, Worcester County, Massachusetts, May 24, 

1785. 
Anna 379 married, on February 26, 17S6, Robert Wilhs Seaver, born in 
Worcester, province of Massachtisetts Bay, about 1762. He was a Revokt- 
tionary War soldier. He died in Charlotte Center, Chautauqua County, N. Y., 

in 1836, and she also there on March 24, 1852. Nathan 380 married 

White, of Oneida County, N. Y. John 381 married first, Sarah — ■ — • — ; and 

second, Clarissa . Willard 382 was killed by lightning when a boy. 

Mary 385 married first, in 1793, John Devine; second, Daniel Thurston, and 
third, Michael Tooke. Sarah 3S7 married William Devine, a brother of John 
Devine. 

Nathan Edson i6o, the father, immediately after his mar- 
riage removed to Petersham, Worcester County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, having sold the real estate 
which he had in part purchased and in part inherited, in the 
town of Bridgewater. He was a soldier in the War of the Revo- 
lution, one of the Minute Men of April 19, 1775; and later ser- 
geant in Captain Edward Cobb's company in the service in Rhode 
Island. In The History of Madison County, New York, by James 
H. Smith (Syracuse, 1880), the author relates: "The first settle- 
ment [in the town of Stockbridge, first Whitestown, 1788; Caze- 
novia, 1795; Smithfield, 1807; Stockbridge, 1836] was made in 
1 791, probably by Nathan Edson, who came from New Hamp- 
shire [Massachusetts ?] with his sons John, Barney, and Calvin, 
young unmarried men, and daughters, Nancy 379, Sarah 387, 
Polly 385, and Olive 388, the first of whom was married to Robert 
[W.] Seaver, who came with them. Nathan Edson took up the 
lot next north of the southeast corner lot of the town, and located 
where Jesse Bridge now lives. In 1820 he removed to a small 
farm leased to the Indians in the north part of the town, which 
now forms a part of the Widow Miller's farm, and there resided 
till his death. John 381 settled in the northeast comer of the 
lot, and removed, soon after the great eclipse, in 1806, to the 
locality of Batavia. Barney 384 removed, soon after John, to 
the same locality, and subsequently to Chautauqua County. 
Calvin 386 continued to reside in this locality till his death, 
which occurred in the south edge of Lenox. Alfred 383 came in 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 479 

about a year later and located on the same lot, where Hiram 
Clarke now lives. He afterwards removed to the south part of 
the town, and subsequently leased of the Indians a farm which 
is now occupied by three or four individuals, the homestead by 
John True, where he died. Robert [W.] Seaver 379 removed to 
Alexander, Genesee County, about the same time that John went 
to Batavia. Sarah 387 married William Devine; and Polly 385, 
his brother John. Willard 382 kc])t a ta\'tM-n a few years on that 
lot. He afterwards removed to and died in the west part of the 
State. The marriage of John Devine and Polly Edson 385, in 
1793, was the first one contracted in the town. John 381 died 
young, of consumption, three or four years after his marriage, 
on the farm allotted to him by his father-in-law. The De vines 
came in soon after the Edsons. After John's death, Polly 385 
married Daniel Thurston, who succeeded him on the same farm 
but afterwards removed to, and died in, the south part of the 
town. Olive Edson 388 married Zenas Cole, who bought Cah'in 
Edson's farm. He afterwards removed to Cincinnati [( )hio], and 
died there. Willard Edson, of Munnsville, son of Alfred 383, is 
the only one of this name living in the town. Willard Edson 
was boni here, June 4, 1802, in a log-house which stood on the 
site of Hiram Clarke's residence. His sister Sarah, wife of Madi- 
son Alby, is also Hving in the town. Only one of the name is 
living in the county, Elam, son of Calvin Edson. Hiram, Mar- 
shall, Marquis (the latter two twins), and John Thurston, are the 
only other grandchildren of Nathan's lixing in this town" (pp. 
707, 708). 

162. Mary, daughter of Nathan 89 and AIar\- (Sprague) 
Edson, boni in the town of Bridgewater, IMxniouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, married there, on 
January 10, 1758, James, .son of WilHam and Marv (Washburn) 
Snow% bom in the town of Bridgewater in 1729. He tlied there 
in 1762, and she in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, Con- 
necticut, aged eighty years. 

Children : 

389. Eliab Snow. iHirn in 1758. 

390. James Snow, Ixirn in 1761. 

"On November 14, 1764, James Sncnv and Mary 162 his 
wife conveved to Solomon Prrkins of b^aston, all our right and 



48o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

title, and interest in the Homestead Farm, of which our father 
Nathan Edson, late of Bridgewater, died seized, said homestead 
being that where he last dwelt, and contains about thirty acres, 
be the same more or less, and we, the said James and Mary, by 
right of heirship, do challenge one fifth part of said homestead, 
to be our just right, and whence our mother, Mary Edson, widow 
of said Nathan Edson, has the improvement of one third part of 
said homestead during her natural life," etc. (From Plymouth 
Registry records.) 

174. Jesse, son of Obed 91 and Keturah (Willis) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on May 24, 1744, married 
there, in 1768, Susanna, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth 
(Gannett) Hayward, boni in 1747. He died in Florida in 1834. 

Children : 

391. Caleb, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 22, 1769. 

392. Hannah, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 14, 1770. 

393. Jesse, born in the town of Ashfield, Frankhn County, province of Massa- 
.-r chusetts Bay, February 12, 1773. 

/ ' Caleb Edson 391 died on December 18, 1770. 

^ ' In 1 77 1, Jesse Edson 174 removed with his wife and daughter 
.'\>f^ .4*" to Ashfield, Mass., where he built a home and reared a large 
ja'^ family of children. He and Simeon Philips were the founders 

v^ of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church. The members of 

the two households met at the house of Simeon Philips on Sun- 
days and read together the church service. From thence, with 
other Episcopalians, they went and worshipped in the district 
school-house, Jesse Edson being the reader. Subsequently the 
small body of worshippers held services in the town hall. The 
parish of St. John's Church was first represented in the diocesan 
convention in 1822. In 1823 it was reported to be prosperous, 
with thirty-eight families and twenty-five communicants. A 
house of worship was later erected. Jesse Edson was permitted 
to see some of the fruit of his early efforts to establish an Epis- 
copal Church in Ashfield. He lived to be ninety years old, and 
died in Florida, whither he had removed a few years before his 
decease to be with a son settled in that State. {Vide A Genea- 
logical Account of the Edsons, Appendix i., pp. viii., ix.) 

176. Obed, son of Obed 91 and Keturah (Willis) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Mas- 



sy 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 481 

sachusetts Bay, New England, on May 2, 1747, married (ist), in 
that place, on April 22, 1769, Prudence, daughter of Wyllys 
Fiske, bom on September 4, 1745. She died in llic town of 
Lanesborough, Berkshire County, province of Massachusetts Bay, 
New England, and he married (2d), probably in 1794, Sarah 

. She died in the town of Richfield, Otsego County, N. Y., 

on October 7, 1824, and lie also there on May 9, 1840. 
Children : 

394. Prudence, born probably in town of Ashfield, Franklin County, province 

of Massachusetts Bay, New England, March 4, 1771. 

395. Obcd, born probably in town of Ashfield, Frankhn County, province of 

Massachusetts Bay, New England, May 6, 1772. 

396. Keturah, born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, province 

of Massachusetts Bay, New England, June 19, 1774. 

397. Stephen Fiske, born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, 

province of Massachvisetts Bay, New England, July 9, 1776. 

398. Olive, born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire Cotmty, province of 

Massachusetts Bay, New England, June 24, 1778. 

399. Hannah, born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, province 

of Massachusetts Bay, New England, August 22, 17S0. 

400. Wyllj's, born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, province of 

Massachvisetts Bay, New England, April 22, 1783. 

401. Lucy, born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, province of 

Massachusetts Bay, New England, July 25, 1785. 
Keturah 396 married Willis Howe, silversniith. She died on Octoljer i , 
1853. Stephen Fiske 397 married, on February 2, 1802, Abigail Smith, and 
died on September 29, 1855. Olive 398 married Seth Tiffany of Cherry Valley, 
Otsego County, N. Y. She died on September 20, 1807. Hannah 399 married 
Pomeroy Noble. She died on June 20, 1803. Lticy 401 married Elam Willis. 
She died on Jtine 14, 1859. 

On June 15, 1782, Simeon Chittenden, of Gilford, New Haven 
County, Conn., conveyed to Obed Edson, junior. 176, of the 
town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, Mass.. for and in con- 
sideration of eighteen pounds, "one third dixision, lot number 
10, in the town of Lanesborough. Also the wantage land, aris- 
ing on the first division, lot number 52. in said town of Lanes- 
borough. " (Books of Deeds, 17, page 599, in the office of Registry 
in Pittsfield, Mass.). By other conveyances, on May 7, 1783, 
February 23, 1784. August 18, 1 784, other parcels of land, (hi 
November ii, 1785, he acquired "thirty-two acres and tlie 
buildings stanchng on the same"; and. on PVbruary 22, 1788, 
forty more acres in the s;iid town. {Books of fkrJs, 18. ig. 26). 
He also conveyed lands in 1789 and 1790, in the town of Lanes- 
borough. In the Book of Records of the Cliitrcli of Iini^lmtd in the 
31 



482 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

town of Lanesborougli, the following entires of elections are 
found under the given dates: "May loth, 1773, Obed Edson, 
and Joseph Hall, choristers"; "April 18, 1774, Obed Edson, 
chorister"; "April 24, 1775, Obed Edson, chorister;" "April 
8, 1776, Obed Edson, chorister"; "April 30, 1781, Obed Edson, 
jr., church warden; Obed and Lewis Edson, choristers ; " "April 
8, 1782, Obed Edson, church warden; Lewis and Obed Edson, 
and Timothy Sherman, choristers " ; "April 28,1 783, Obed Edson, 
church warden" ; " May 8, 1786, Obed Edson, church warden." 

Under the heading : Baptisms: " August 10, 1794," baptized, 
"Sally [Sarah] Edson [176], an adult, wife of Obed Edson, jr." 

A deed, recorded at Adams, Berkshire County, Mass., shows 
that Obed Edson conveyed, on December 28, 1797, for ;^875, 
one acre of land, to John Powell, jr., both of the town of Lanes- 
borough. 

Obed 176 Edson's change of residence to Otsego County, 
N. Y., is indicated by a deed, made on January 3, 1798, between 
Levi Beardsley and Sarah, his wife, of Richfield Springs, Otsego 
County, yeoman, of the first part, and Obed Edson of Lanes- 
borough, Berkshire County, yeoman, of the second part, wherein 
the first-named parties, for $1500, conveyed to the last-named 
person, 113 acres and 151 rods of land, being part of lot 37, in 
Schuyler's Patent, in the county of Otsego. On Ma^ 20, 1799, 
at a vestry meeting, held at the house of Wyllys Howe, father 
of his first wife. Prudence, Obed Edson was elected second ves- 
tryman of Saint Luke's Episcopal Church in the town of Rich- 
field. His name appears for the last time in the proceedings of 
the vestry in 181 4. 

The first religious society that was founded in the town of 
Richfield, Otsego County, was that of the Protestant Episcopal 
congregation, which was organized as a church by the Rev. 
Daniel Nash, as pastor, in 1799, at Brewster's Tavern. A meet- 
ing-house was not erected until 1803. It stood, as is related, 
north of the old elms, on the Colwell farm. Christopher Colwell 
donated the lot. John, Amasa, and Cyrus Pringle, Timothy 
Hatch, and Obed Edson were some of the prominent Episco- 
palians of that part of Otsego County. The old church was 
pulled down; and in 1832, the new St. Luke's, now standing in 
the village of Monticello, was built. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 483 

On May 29, 1828, Obed Edson (2d) 176 of the town of Rich- 
field, sold a part of his property there to his son Stephen Fiske 
Edson 397. It is said that Obed Edson (2d) Hved one half mile 
north of Monticello, or about two miles southwest of Richfield 
Springs, on the right side of the road running northward, first 
in a log house, afterward in a frame dwelling which, later, his 
son, Stephen Fiske Edson occupied. 

177. Lewis, son of Obed 91 and Kcturali (Willis) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County. ])rovince 
of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on January 22. 1748; 
married there, on January 30, 1770, Hepzibah, daughter of 
Jonathan and Thankful (Newton) Washburn. lie died in 
Mink Hollow, town of Woodstock, Ulster County, N. Y., in 
1820. 

Child: 

402. Lewis, born in the town of Bridgewater, on January 23. 1771. 

On September 5, 1772, Lewis 177 and Hepzibah (Washburn) 
Edson, and their mother, Thankful (Newton) Washburn, con- 
veyed to Jost Willis, for sixty pounds, all their "home lands" 
with their "dwelling house, seven acres," and some land, six 
acres, near by. The property, it is said, lay about three quar- 
ters of a mile north of the house later occupied 1)\" William 
Latham. On June 14. 1776, he sold to Ezra Fobes the home- 
stead of twenty-five acres one quarter and twenty-one rods, with 
the dwelling-house thereon. His mother-in-law was a witness to 
the deed, she having relinquished her right of dower in the 
homestead sold by him in \-j-j2. This property, it is said, was 
on the Taunton Road, opposite the residence of Deacon Fobes 
(in 1854, of James K. Leach), about one and a half miles from 
William Latham's house. 

As entered in the Book of Records of the Church of I'^Hi^Uvid, 
in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County. ]->nn-ince of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, his name ai")]iears under sev- 
eral dates, at the election of clun\'h officers: "May 17, 1779, 
Lewis Edson, chorister"; "April 3. 1780, Lewis Etlson, chorister " : 
"April 30. 1781. Obed and Lewis Edson. choristers"; " Ai>ril 8. 
1782, Lewis and Obed Edson, and Timothy Sherman, choristers. " 
As has been mentioned in the history of The fulsons in Eni^laiui 
and America, bv larvis B. Edson, New ^'ork, 1003. I^ewis Edson. 



484 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

while living in the town of Lanesborough, composed the popular 
hymn-tunes, entitled Bridgewater, Lenox, Greenfield, and Siiffield. 

Ignatius Thompson, in his History of tJie Town of Halifax, 
Plymouth County, Massachusetts, adjoining that of Bridgewater, 
referring to the settlement of the disagreements in the Halifax 
church, between the years 1769 and 1776, says the members of 
the church determined to " employ a Mr. Edson of Bridgewater to 
come there and teach them the Science of Music." 

William Latham (now deceased), the author of the work 
Epitaphs in Old Bridgewater, in a letter addressed to Mr. Hubert 
P. Main, of the firm of Biglow & Main, music publishers. New 
York City, writes: "I find the music of Edson & Leach, in the 
fifth edition of Worcester's Collection of Sacred Harmony, 1794, 
and in the Easy Instruction, printed at Albany, 1798. I sup- 
pose J. Leach is the James Leach, 1762-1798, you speak of." 

In .4 Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, compiled and 
edited by Theodore Baker, New York, 1900, page 164, is the 
following: "Edson, Lewis, b. Bridgewater, Mass., Jan. 22, 1748, 
d. Woodstock, N. Y., 1820. Lived in New York, 1801-17, and 
compiled (with Thomas Seymour), The N. Y. Coll. of Sacred 
Music. Composed the hymn-tunes Bridgewater, Lenox, Green- 
field, and others. Removed to Woodstock in 181 7." 

It is related that Lewis Edson, Senior 177 executed a deed, 
on January 26, 1791, in Albany, N. Y., conveying a parcel of 
land lying in Lanesborough, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. 

179. Thomas, son of Obed 91 and Martha (Thomas) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on June 3, 1753, married in 
the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, on 
June 15, 1780, Mary, daughter of William and Mary (Wright) 
Jarvis, bom on May 12, 1762. She died at Fly Creek, Otsego 
County, New York, in February, 1835, and he also there in 1836. 

Children : 

403. Mary, born in the town of Lanesborough, Mass., on March 29, 1781. 

404. Wilham, born in the town of Lanesborough, Mass., on July 12, 1783. 

405. Wilham Jarvis, born in the town of Lanesborough, Mass., on February 23, 

1786. 

406. Asahel, born in the town of Lanesborough, Mass., on August 7, 1788. 

407. A daughter, born in the town of Lanesborough, Mass., on February 13, 

1791. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 485 

408. Oramcl, born in the town of Lancsborough, Mass., on September 9, 1792. 

409. Sarah, l)orn in the town of Lancsborough, Mass., on January 4, 1795. 

410. Theodatus, born in Fly Creek, Otsego County, N. Y., on July 7, 1798. 

411. EHzabeth, born in Fly Creek, Otsego County, N. Y., on September 15, 

I So I. 
Mary (Polly) 403 married 1. C. Marvin. William 404 died in the town of 
Lanesborough, on March 23, 1785. The unnamed daughter 407 died on the 
day of her birth. Sarah 409 (Sally) died on January 4, 1803. Theodatus 
Edson 410, lawyer, died intestate in Otsego County, N. Y., and, on February 
7, 1835, letter of administration on his property was granted to Eliza Rice. 

The following entries contained in .4 Book of Records of the 
Church of England, . . . Lanesborough, OcV. 2'"!, iy6y, relate 
to members of Thomas Edson's family : Baptisms : May 27, 1 781 , 
"Polly Daughter to Thos. & Mary Edson"; August 31, 1783, 
"Billy son to Thomas & Mary Edson"; April 9, 1786, "Bill 
Jarvis son to Thos. & Mary Edson"; Nov. 4, 1792, "Oramel 
son to Thos. & Mary Edson"; February 8, 1795, "Sally daug" 
Thomas Edson." 

The following excerpta relate to the regiments and companies 
with which Thomas Edson was connected in the War of the 
Revolution: "Under the resolve of the Massachusetts Congress 
of April 22, 1775, Bristol County raised a regiment which was 
placed under the command of Colonel Timothy Walker of Reho- 
both; Nathaniel Leonard, lieutenant-colonel; Abial Mitchell, 
major. Captains: . . . Silas Cobb. The alarm from Lexing- 
ton reached Norton on the day of the battle, and Captain Silas 
Cobb and Captain Seth Gilbert, each with a squad, started for 
the scene on the same day; Cobb had eighteen and Gilbert fifty- 
two men." On October 6, 1775, ^^'^'^ com]\any officers were as 
reported: Silas Cobb, captain; [rsacl Smitli, lieutenant; Isaac 
Fisher, ensign. 

In April and May, 1777, Captain Israel Trow had the ctmi- 
mand of a company of men in Rliode Island service, most of 
the men from the town of Norton, Bristol County. The officers of 
the company besides the captain were: Isaac White and Jona- 
than Pratt, Heutenants; John White. Jacob Ncwland, Amos 
Martin, and Thomas Edson, sergeants. 

The Hon. Kent Jarvis (bom at 1'1\- Creek, Otsego County, 
N. Y., on June 13, 1801, married there on ^hly 17, iS_m, luiretta 
M., daughter of Eliphalet Williams, died in Massillon. Ohio, on 
January 15, 1877) collected considerable genealogical data 



486 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



relating to the Jarvis family, but was unable to perfect his line- 
age beyond William Jarvis, bom on March 29, 1727, and who died 
at Brainard's Bridge, Rensselaer County, N. Y., on June 15, 1772. 
He had served as an officer in the French and Indian War. His 
son Kent served as a major in the War of the Revolution, and 
was killed near Saratoga by Indians. 

The following data are in the work entitled The Jarvis Family; 
or, The Descendants of tJie First Settlers of the Name in Massa- 
chusetts and Long Island, and those who have More Recently Settled 
in other Parts of the United States and British America. Col- 
lected and compiled by George A. Jarvis, of New York; George 
Murray Jarvis, of Ottawa, Canada ; William Jarvis Wetmore, of 
New York; assisted by Alfred Harding, of Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Hartford : Press of The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company. 
1879, PP- 154, 157. 158, 159. 164, 165, 166, 169. 



No. 


Name. 


Born. 


Died. 


Remarks. 


1487 


William Jarvis, 


Mch. 29, 1727 


June 15, 1772 


M. Mary Wright. 


1488 


Marv Wright, 
1 1 children as tol- 
lows. 


Mch II, 1730 


Dec. 22, 1804 


D. at Flv Creek, 
N. Y. 


1489 


loscph. 


May 14, 1752 


Oct. 17, 1806 


M. Jan. £2, 1783. 


1490 


Bill, 


Dec. 30, 1753 


Feb. 14, 1830 


M. Avig. 30, 1780. 


1491 


Elijah, 




Aged 1 8. 




1492 


Kent, 








1493 


Elizabeth, 


Nov. 10, I 760 




M. Jan. 29, 1783. 


1494 


Mary, 


May 12, 1762 


Feb., 1835 


M. Jtme 15, 1780. 


1495 


Chloe, 




Young. 




1496 


Asahcl, 




Young. 




1497 


Asahel, 2d, 


Feb. 15, 176S 


Sept. 10, 1823 


M. Mar. 18, 1790. 


1498 


Chloe, 2d, 


Aug. 15, 1770 


About 1846 


M. Feb. 19, 1790. 
John Miles. 


1499 


Sally, 


Aug. 19, 1772 


Dec. 16, 1831 


M. Feb. 14, 1793. 


1532 


Thomas Edson, 
9 children as fol- 
lows. 


Jan. 3, 1753 


1836 


M. June 15, 1780. 


1533 


Polly, 


Mch. 29, 1781 




I. Marvin. 


1534 


Billy, 


July 12, 1783 


Mch. 23, 1785 




1535 


William Jarvis, 


Feb. 23, 1786 




Polly Fairchild. 


1536 


Asahel, 


Aug. 7, 1788 




F. Stetson. 


1537 


A daughter. 


Feb. 13, 1 79 1 


Feb. 13, 1791 




i53» 


Ornell [Oramel?] 


Sept. 9, 1792 




Lydia Wells. 


I.S39 


Sally, 


Jan. 4, 1795 


Jan. 4, 1803 




1540 


Theodoras [Theoda- 










tus ?] 


July 7, 1798 




Lawyer. 


^54^ 


Ehzabeth, 


Sept. 15, 1 80 1 




J. Price. 



186. Benjamin, son of John 95 and Hannah (Allen) Edson, 
boni in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 487 

Massachusetts Bay, New England, on November 12, 1754, mar- 
ried there, on January 3, 1782, Deborah, daughter of Thomas 
and Mary (Pratt) Perkins, bom in the town of Bridgewater, on 
September 12, 1761. He died there on December 5, 1835, and 
she on January 3, 1848. Their remains are entombed in Trinity 
Protestant Episcopal Church graveyard, in Bridgewater. 
Children : 

412. Hannah Allen, born in the town of Bridgewater. on February 26, 1784. 

413. John, bom in the town of Bridgewater on March 25, 1786. 

414. Benjamin, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 22, 1788. 

415. Allen, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 16, 1791. 

416. Theodore, bom in the town of Bridgewater on August 24, 1793. 

417. William Perkins, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 14, 1797. 
Benjamin 414 taught a private sehool in South Carohna, and while there had 

typhoid fever, and died, on December 23, i8i8, on his way home. Allen 415 
married, in the town of Bridgewater, on March 14, 1815, Minerva, daughter of 
Ebenezer and Mary (Pratt) Perkins. William Perkins 417 went to New Orleans, 
La., and died, on March 24, 1S31, in one of the states of Mexico. 

187. Nehemiah, son of John 95 and Hannah (Allen) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on January 15, 1758, married 
there on April 5, 1783, Olive, daughter of Charles and Abigail 
(Waterman) Perkins, bom in the town of Bridgewater, on Novem- 
ber 4, 1764. He died on January 22, 182 1, and she on September 
28, 1842. 

Children : 

418. Ptolemy O'Meara, born on November 12, 1785. 

419. John, bom on December 4, 1787. 

420. Martin, bom on April 23, 1790. 

421. Mehetabel. 

422. Esther, born on April 3, 1795. 

423. Lucius, bom on January 2, 1797. 

424. Nehemiah, bom on Ajiril rS, 1802. 

425. Benjamin Chase, born on August 5, 1804. 

426. Charles P., born in Vermont, on January 2, 1S09. 

189. Ezra, son of Ezra 96 and Rebecca (Johnson) Edson. 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province (^f 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on January 13, 1759. married 
there on September 19, 1782, Asenath ("Sena"), daughter of 
Charles and Abigail (Waterman) Perkins, l)orn in the towni of 
Bridgewater, on September 23, 1766. He died in Rutland, Ver- 
mont, on February 27, 1840, and she in the same place on March 
15, 1844. 



488 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Children : 

427. Albertus, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 24, 1783. 

428. Zidon, born in the town of Tomhnson, Windham County, Vt., on Novem- 

ber 1 1 , I 7S5. 

429. Galen, born in the town of Tomhnson, Windham County, Vt., on March 

12, 1788. 

430. Ophir, born in the town of Tomhnson, Windham County, Vt., on April 2 1 , 

1790. 

431. Abigail, born in the town of Grafton, Windham County, Vt., on March 27, 

1792. 

432. Lavina, born in the town of Grafton, Windham Covmty, Vt., on August 

3. 1794- 

433. Cyrus, born in the town of Grafton, Windham County, Vt., on March 23, 

1798. 

434. Asenath, born in the town of Grafton, Windham County, Vt. , on September 

28, 1800. 

435. Melinda, born in the town of Grafton, Windham County, Vt., on Novem- 

ber 19, 1802. 

436. Alfred, born in the town of Grafton, Windham County, Vt., on January 

29, 1806. 

437. Ezra, bom in the town of Grafton, Windham County, Vt., on December 

7, 1808. 
Albertus 427 married, on December 2, 1804, Sarah Colwell. 

On April 15, 1785, Ezra Edson 189 of the town of Tomlinson, 
Windham County, Vermont, bought of Ebenezer Burgess of that 
town, seventy acres, more or less, of land, being the south part 
of lot number eleven in twelfth range, for fifteen pounds. 

In 1790, Ezra Edson was chosen a highway surveyor of the 
town of Tomlinson; from 1793 to 1795, he served the town of 
Grafton as a selectman; in 1793, he was elected a member of 
the General Assembly of the State of Vermont ; and in 1 80 1 , he 
was the constable and collector of the town. He was prominently 
identified for many years with the political affairs of the town 
and a large landholder in it. Intending to change his residence 
he sold his remaining property on October 3, 1833, for eight 
hundred and fifty dollars. 

190. Mary, daughter of Ezra 96 and Rebecca (Johnson) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on December 15, 
1760, married there on November 2, 1780, Robert, son of 
Thomas and Susanna (Latham) Wade, bom in 1750. He died 
in 1813. 

Children : 

438. Celia Wade, born in 17S2. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 489 

439. Sarah Wade, born in 1784. 

440. Naomi Wade, born in 17S7. 

441. Thomas Wade, born in 1792. 

442. Calvin Wade, bom in 1800. 

192. Lavina, daughter of Ezra 96 and Rebecca (Johnson) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on April 24, 
1765, married there on June 29, 1783, Captain I'^])]iraim, son of 
Benjamin and Eunice (Holmes) Sprague, bom in 1763. 

Children : 

443. Holmes Sprague, born in 1783. 

444. Ephraim Sprague, born in 1787. 

445. Eunice vSprague, born in 17QO. 

446. Lavina Sprague, born in 1799. 

447. Chloe Sprague, bom in 1804. 
44S. Mira Sprague, born in 1S06. 

193. Libeus [Lebbasus], son of Ezra 96 and Rebecca (John- 
son) Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on October 27, 
1769, married there on October 14, 1793, Johanna Keen, bom in 
1768. She died in the town of Bridgewater on Marcli 17, 1818. 
and he also there on January 20, 18 19. Their remains are 
entombed in Trinity Protestant Episcopal Cliurch graveyard, in 
Bridgewater. 

Children : 

449. Ezra, born in the town of Bridgewater in 1795. 

450. Charles, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

451. Joanna, born in the town of Bridgewater in i8or. 

Joanna Edson 451 died on March 17, 1818, aged seventeen years. 

195. Hannah, daughter of Ezra 96 and Rebecca (Johnson) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth Countv, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on June 25, 1774, 
married there on June 26, 1796, Simeon, son of Abijah and Ann 
(Fobes) Packard, bom in 1770. 

Child: 

452. Simeon Packard. 

196. Cyrus, son of Ezra 96 and Rebecca (Johnson) Edson. 
bom in the t(^wn of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Massa- 
chusetts, on August 16, 1777, married there (ist). on March 3, 
1797, Hannah, daughter of John and Bcthiali (Otis) Hudson, 
bom in tlie town of Bridgewater. on \pv\\ 2, 1777. She died in 
Mendon, Rutland County, Vermont, on Mav 2, i8so. and he 



490 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

married (2(1) in Hampton, Washington Ccnmty, N. Y., on Sep- 
tember 19, 1852, Laura A. Smith, bom in Poultney, Vermont, 
on June 30, 1786. He died in Mendon, Vermont, on September 
23, 1862. 
Children : 

453. Rebecca, born in the town of Bridgewater on June 19, 179S. 

454. Anna, bom in the town of Bridgewater on August 11, 1799. 

455. Hannali, born in tin- town of Minot, Me., on December 19, 1802. 
45G. Cyrus, born in the town of Minot, Me., on May 26, 1805. 

457. Melzar, born in the town of Minot, Me., on October i, 1807. 

458. Melvin, bom in the town of Minot, Me., on October i, 1807. 

459. Susan, born in the town of Minot, Me., on May 18, iSio. 

' 4G0. Ezra, l)orn in the town of Turner, Me., on Januarj^ 12, 181 3. 

461. Galen Kingman, born in the town of Turner, Me., on June 13, 1815. 

462. Otis Hudson, born in the town of Shrewsbury, Vt., on August 3, 181 8. 
Melvin Edson 458 died in Minot, Me., on October 5, 1807. Susan 459 died 

in Bennington, Vt., on May 30, 1850; married Dr. Silas Wilcox. Otis Hudson 
462 died in Hampton, N. Y., on April 11, 1851 ; married Anne Berry. 

197. Sarah, daughter of Ezra 96 and Rebecca (Johnson) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on February 18, 
1780, married there in 1801, Jeremiah, son of Jeremiah and 
Charity (Pratt) Washburn, bom in 1769. 

Children : 

463. Ezra Edson Washburn, l)orn in 1801. 

464. Eliza Hyde Washburn, born in 1803. 

465. Ezra Edson Washburn, born in 1806. 

466. Robie Snell Washburn, born in 1808. 

467. Anna Edson Washburn, bom in 1810. 

468. Emily Howard Washburn, born in 181 2. 

469. Jeremiah Washburn. 

199. Daniel, son of Joseph 100 and Abigail (Forrest) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on October 16, 1741, married 
there, on October 21, 1765, Olive, daughter of Isaac and Sarah 
(Packard) Fuller, bom on October 14, 1740. 

Children : 

470. Isaiah, ) 1 ,- 

' V bom m 1769. 

471. Reuben. ) ' 

Daniel Edson 199 sold his farm of forty-five acres, in 1773, 
to Josiah Allen. 

202. John, son of Joseph 100 and Abigail (Forrest) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on May 20, 1748, married 



EDSOXS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 491 

there, on May 3, 1770, Judith, daughter of Zachariah and Sarah 
(Packard) Shaw, bom in the town of Bridge water on May 20, 
1749. He died in 1814. 
Children : 

472. Isaac, bom in the town of Bridgewater on December 5, 1770. 

473. Martha, > , ■ ^.u 4. r r) - 1 ^ ■»* 

(■bom m the town of Bridgewater on May 24, 1772. 

474. Mary, ) *' / •+ / / 

47.5, Sarah, hiom in the town of Bridgewater on March 3, 1776. 

476. Ruth, bom in the town of Bridgewater on January 31, 1778. 

477. Isaiah, bom in the town of Bridgewater on February 10, 1781. 

478. Silvia, bom in the town of Bridgewater on December 4, 1782. 

479. Hannah, bom in the town of Bridgewater on September 8, 1784. 

480. Jacoh), bom in the town of Bridgewater on November 2, 1786. 

481. Xehemiah Shaw, bom in the town of Bridgewater on January 9, 1789. 

482. Joseph, bom in the town of Bridgewater on December 23, 1792. 

483. James, bom in the town of Bridgewater on March 25, 1795. 

Hannah 479 died on September 27. 1785. Isaac Edson 472 settled in 
Otsego County, New York, in 1795, and lived for a number of years at Ed- 
son's Comers, in that county. He married Sarah . 

210. David, son of David 104 and Sarah fSouthworth) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on July 13, 1759, niarried 
there Cist) on March 18, 1783, Lydia, daughter of David Shaw, 
of Abington. She died, and he niarried ('2d), in the town of 
Bridgewater, on December 19, 1785, Lydia Bassett of Norton. 
He died on December 15, 1831, and she, on March 29, 1839. 

Children by first wife : 

484. Hannah, bom in the town of Bridgewater on November 27, 1783. 

485. Jonathan, bom in the town of Bridgewater on December 12, 1785. 

Children by second wife : 

486. David, bom in the town of Bridgewater on January 27, 1789. 

487. Sarah, bom in the town of Bridgewater on June 28. 1791. 

488. Lydia, bom in the town of Bridgewater on July 12. 1793. 

489. Mehetabel, bom in the town of Bridgew-ater on August 26, 1795. 

490. Mar\-, bom in the town of Bridgewater on August 16, 1797. 

491. Eliza, bom in the town of Bridgewater on March 19. 1805. 

492. Rebecca, bom in the town of Bridgewator on February 9. 181 1. 
Jonathan Edson 485 died unmarried on ^ ver 13, 1863. Mar>' Eds^jn 

490 married, in 1817. Daniel Burrill. of Abington. Eliza Edson 491 married, 
on July 9, 1829. H. Warren. Rebecca Edson 492 married Ebenczer Alger. 

2L3. Joseph, son of Jesse 105 and Lydi^/Titus) Edson, bom 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on December 26, 1755, mar- 
ried there on January- 4. 1786, Mar\', daughter of Issachar Vinal, 
of Scituate, bom in 1755. He died in the town of Bridgewater, 



492 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

on August 27, 1 791, and she, in the same place, on March 3, 
1807. 

Children : 

493. Jesse, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 12, 1787. 

494. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 3, 1791. 

Sarah Edson 494 married, in 181 1, Benjamin, son of John and Zerviah 
(Willis) Keith. 

Letter of Administration on the estate of Joseph Edson, Jr., 
late of Bridgewater, yeoman, granted to Joseph Swan, of Bridge- 
water, on September 13, 1791. 

214. John, son of Jesse 105 and Lydia (Titus) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, New England, on April 25, 1760, married there, on 
March 15, 1785, Susanna, daughter of Ichabod and Susanna 
Orcutt of Stafford, Conn. 

Children : 

495. Fanny, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 20, 1785. 

496. Orcutt, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 26, 1787. 

497. Packard, bom in the town of Bridgewater on August 2, 1789. 

498. Osander, bom in the town of Bridgewater on July 19, 1792. 

499. Oris, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 22, 1794. 

500. Oza, born in the town of Bridgewater on January iS, 1797. 

501. Susanna. 

502. Josiah. 

503. Elizabeth Orcutt. 

Packard Edson 497 married Lucinda, daughter of Israel and Hannah 
(Washburn) Howe, of Stafford; Osander 498 married Marcia Johnson, widow 
of Roj^al Ellis and daughter of Ebenezer and Mary (Edson) Johnson, died 
July 23, 1871; Oris 499 married Irene Markham, of Longmeadow, Mass., died 
in Stafford; Susanna 501 married Lyman Spellman, lived and died in Staf- 
ford; Josiah 502 married Martha Stebbins, at Stafford, and died there; Eliza- 
beth Orcutt 503 married Charles Thompson, and died at Stafford. 

216. Rebecca, daughter of Jesse 105 and Rebecca (Belcher) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on June 7, 
1770, married, in 1794, Ezekiel, son of Ezekiel and Mary Reed, 
bom on September 16, 1772. He married, second, Hannah 
Linfield. 

Children : 

504. Emma Corbett Reed, born in 1795. 

505. Lydia Reed, born in 1797. 

506. Josiah Reed, born in 1799. 

507. Joseph Edson Reed, bom in 1801. 

508. Edwin Reed, bom in 1804. 

509. Charles Briggs Reed, bom in 1806. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 493 

218. Josiah, son of James 106 and Esther (Allen) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on May 31, 1753, married 
there on April 2, 1777, Reliance, daughter of Isaac and Sarah 
(Packard) Fuller, born on December 22, i 756. She died on June 
26, 181 7, and he in 1820. 

Children : 

^^\(). Zilpah, boni in the town of Brido;ewatcr on March 2, 1778. 

511. Susanna, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 31, 17S0. 

512. A son, bom in the town of Bridgewater on September 26, 1782. 

513. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 17, 1783. 

514. Barnabas, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 5, 1786. 

515. Esther, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 20, 178S. 

516. Rehance, bom in the town of Bridgewater on February 9, 1792. 

517. Olive, bom in the town of Bridgewater on May 5, 1795. 
The first-bom son 512 died on the day of his birth. 

Josiah Edson 218, the father, yeoman, of Bridgewater, made 
his will on Jime 10, 1813, which was probated on January 17, 
1820. In it he mentioned his son Barnabas, and his daughters, 
Susanna Packard, Sarah Hayward, Zilpah Kingman, Esther 
Kingman, Reliance, and Olive. 

230. Josiah, son of Josiah 109 and Rutli ( I^ailey) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on June 22. 1738, married 
there, on September 17, 1760, Hannah, daughter of Thomas and 
Desire Lawrence, bom in 1739. He died in the town of Bridge- 
water on December 25, 1778, and his widow married there, on 
May 9, 1782, Eliphalet, son of Jonathan and Experience (Carver) 
Cary, bom in 1732. She died on Januarv 22, 1819. and he on 
March i, 1820. 

Children : 

518. Caleb, bom in the town of Bridgewater on July 29, 1761. 

519. Josiah. born in the town of Bridgewater on January 31, 1766. 
Caleb Edson 518 married in 1783 Sarah Dean, of Taunton. 

Letters of administration on the estate of Josiah Edson. Jr., 
late of Bridgewater, were granted on February i . i 7 79, to Hannah. 
the widow, and Nehemiah Hooker, Jr. 

235. Mary, daughter of Josiah iO() and Mary (Parker) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, ])rovince of 
Massachusetts Bay, .\e\v England, on January 13, 1749. married 
there on September 27. 1770, I )r. Jonathan Crane, horn in 1737. 



494 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

She died, and he married, in 1783, Lydia Adams, of Kingston. 
He died on December 31, 18 13. 
Children : 

520. Daniel Crane, born in 1771. 

521. Susanna Crane, born in 1776. 

242. Abiel, son of Abiezer iii and Mary (Packard) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, married in 1774, Hannah, 
daughter of John Norton, of Middleborough. He died in 1823. 

Children : 

522. Abiel, born in 1775. 

523. Cyms. 

524. Oliver. 

525. Mary. 

526. John. 

527. James. 

528. Daniel. 

529. Josiah. 

530. Abiezer. 

The family resided in Middleborough. Abiel 522 married Sarah Kibbie. 

243. Adam, son of Abiezer iii and Mary (Packard) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, married Mary Hazard. 

Children : 

531. Henry. 

532. George. 

533. EHza. 

Adam Edson 243 received a collegiate education and was 
honored with the degree of Master of Arts in 1775. 

244. Rodolphus, son of Abiezer iii and Mary (Packard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, in 1753, married 
there on August 14, 1780, Lydia, daughter of Lemuel Crane, of 
Berkley, born in 1761. He died in Oxford, Mass., on October 5, 
1833, and she on January 15, 1841, aged eighty years. 

Children : 

534. Ephraim, born on May 27, 1781. 

535. Elizabeth, born on January 20, 1784. 

536. Bradford G., born in Oxford, Mass., on September 21, 1801. 
Ephraim 534 died unmarried on June 23, 1851 ; Elizabeth 535 married John 

Pratt; Bradford 536 resided unmarried at Oxford, and occupies the homestead, 
and devoted his time to farming. 

Rodolphus Edson 244, the father, went to Oxford, Mass., in 
1798, having bought, on June 21, 1797, the present Tyler Hoi- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 495 

man place. In 181 2, being then at Northbridgc, he sold this 
farm. He afterward returned willi liis sons E])liniim and Brad- 
ford G. to Oxford, where he died. 

245. Polycarpus, son of Abiezer m an<l Mary fPackard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, in 1754, married 
there, on March 11, 1778, Lucy Eaton, of Middleborough. He 
died in the town of Bridgewater on August 21, 1796, and she in 
the same place on November 12, 1816, in her fifty -sixth year. 
Their remains are entombed in the Keith or South Street grave- 
yard in Titicut. 

Children : 

537. Charles. 

538. Sarah. ' " 

539. Royal, born on February 13, 17 84. 

540. Charlotte, born on Jantiary 12, 1786. 

Sarah 538 married in the town of Brido^ewater. on September i, 1803, Zach- 
ariah Eddy. Royal Edson 539 died on January 13. 1785. Charlotte 540 died 
on October 3, 1863. 

On September 26, 1796, Jonathan Crane, Esq., of Bridgewater, 
Joshua White, Esq., of Middleborough, and Solomon Keith, of 
Bridgewater, were appointed to take an in\-entory of the estate 
of Polycarpus, late of Bridgewater, gentleman. 

25S. Elijah, son of Elijah 113 and Anne (Packard) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, jirovince of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, married (1st) Xancy Clark, 
of Plymouth. She died and he married (2d) in the town of 
Bridgewater, on March 13, 1766, Martha, daughter of Joseph 
and Deliverance (Orcutt) Washburn, born in 1744. 

Children : 

541. Sarah, born in tlir tnwn of Bridgewater. 

542. Oliver, liorn in the town of Bridgewater. 

543. Ziba, born in the town of Bridgewater. 

541. Infant, born in the town of Ashburnhani in 1775. 
The infant dii'd on May 13. 1776. 

Elijah Edson 258 removed from the town of Bridgewater. in 
1769, to the town of Ashburnli;im, Worcester County, jirovince of 
Massachusetts Bay. His name a])])ears in the jirovince list of 
taxpayers in i 770, made 1)y the assessors of the town of Aslibum- 
ham, on December 14, 1770. 

He was a drnmmtM- in Captain Gates' company in 1775. 



496 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Elijah and his wife Martha probably removed to New Brain- 
tree, Mass., in 1778. 

259. Calvin, son of Elijah 113 and Anne (Packard) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridge water, married there on February 6, 
1766, Lydia, daughter of Lot and Elizabeth (Homes) Conant, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater on September 2, 1746. Both 
died in 1778. 

Children : 

545. Calvin, born in the town of Bridgewater on July 19, 1773. 

546. Abigail. 

547. Lydia. 

548. Elizabeth. 

Abigail 546 married Willis, of Springfield. Lydia 547 married in the 

town of Bridgewater, on April 22, 17S9. Thomas, son of John and Abigail (Pratt) 
Conant, born on March i, 1766. She died in Westford, Chittenden County, Vt., 

on September 19, 1S64. Elizabeth 548 married first Nye, of Hardwick, 

and (second) Bruce, of Springfield. 

The family resided for a time in Oakham, Mass. 

261. Hosea, son of Elijah 113 and Anne (Packard) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England. 

"Minute Men. We the subscribers Inlisted agreeable to the 
vote of the Provincial Congress as Minute or Picquit men in the 
town of Brookfield, for the term of six months after the date, 
&c., under the command of Joseph Gilbert, Captain, William 
Ayres, ist Left., Peter Harwood, 2d Left., and Abner How, 
Ensign, do hereby solemnly covenant and agree that we will 
muster, exercise, and do our utmost to obtain the art military, 
and subject ourselves to the command of our said captain and 
the subalterns of his company by us chosen and appointed ; and 
if any dispute shall arise, or if any of us shall not give such 
obedience to his or their order as he or they shall think Reason- 
able and Just, the same shall be Determined by the Major part 
of the Company ; and we severally agree that we will at all times 
submit to such order, discipline and censure as shall be so de- 
termined. Witness our hands this fourteenth day of November, 
1774." [Signed by forty-seven persons including Hosea 
Edson.] 

"A Roll of Minute Men in Col. Jona. Warner's Regiment, 
commanded by Capt. Jona. Barnes, that marched from Brook- 
field on the 19th of April 1775. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 497 

"Captain Jona. Barnes, [Time of Service,] 9 days. 
"Lieut. Peter Harwood, " 9 " 

" " Obed Bartlett, " 7 " 

" Fifr Benjamin Gilbert [Time of Service,] 9 days. 
Hosea Edson, " 9 " 

" The following List of Brookfield men in Eight Months service, 
is gathered from Rolls in the State archives. — In Col. Learned's 
Regiment: Capt. Peter Harwood, Lieut. Asa Danforth, Ensign 
Benj'? Pollard. . . . Drummers, Samuel Marsh, Benjamin 
Gilbert, and Hosea Edson." 

" 1776. Brookfield men in Capt. Wm. Todd's Co., Col. Craft's 
Regt. of Artillery. Feb. i, to May 8, 1776. . . . Hosea 
Edson." — History of Nortli Brookfield, Massachusetts, Preceded 
by on Account of Old Ouabaitg, Indian and English Occupation, 
'1647-1676. Brookfield Records, 1686-178:;. By J. H. Temple. 
With a Genealogical Register, published by the Town of North- 
field, 1887, pp. 226, 227, 228, 231, 232. 

265. Olive, daughter of Elijah 113 and Anne (Packard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, married there on 
November 4, 1787, Salmon, son of Seth and Susanna (Packard) 
Richard. 

Children: 

549. Seth Richard, born in 17 88. 

550. How Richard, liorn in 1790. 

551. Thomas Richard, bom in r794. 

552. Calvin Richard, born in 1796. 

553. Salmon Richard, born in 1709. 
The famiU'' resided in Middleboroui^h. 

269. Jacob, son of Benjamin 114 and Anne (Thayer) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, married there on May 14. 
1759, Elizabeth, daughter of .\1)irl and Sarah (Ames) Packard, 
born in 1739. 

Children : 

554. Benjamin, born in the town of Bridgewater on Oelol)er 5. 1750. 

555. Anne, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 25, 1761. 

556. Elizabeth, born in the town of Bridprewatcr on lM-l)ruary <>. 1704 

557. Jacol), born in the town of Bridgewater on Februarv 20, 1765. 
55<S. Abiel. born in the town of Bridgewater on August 6. i 76S. 



32 



498 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

559. Simeon, born in the town of Bridgewater on September i6, 1770. 

560. Sarah, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 22, 1772. 

561. Eurene, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 5, 1775. 

562. Levi, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 2, 1778. 
The family resided for a time in Pelham, Mass. 

273. Seth, son of William ii8 and Martha (Howard) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on June 6, 1761, married in 
1784, Theodora Howard, of Braintree. She died on April 26, 
1826, and he on September 27, 1848. 

Children : 

563. Sarah, bom in the town of Bridgewater on February 28, 1787. 

564. Jacob, born in the town of Bridgewater on January n, 1789. 

565. Robert, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 25, 1790. 

566. Ehzabeth, born in the town of Bridgewater on September 11, 1792. 

567. Mary, bom in the town of Bridgewater on June 13, 1794. 

568. Anne, bom in the town of Bridgewater on July 8, 1796. 

569. Galen, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 19, 1800. 

570. Phebe, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 10, 1802. 

571. Melinda, born in the town of Bridgewater on March 12, 1804. 

Jacob Edson 564 moved to Dorchester; Robert 565 to Dedham. Mary 
(Polly) 567 married in the town of Bridgewater, on May 24, 1829, Jacob, son of 
Isaiah and Mary (Keyzer) Fuller, bom in 1776. He married (ist), in iSoo, 
Abigail Leonard, and (2d), on September 9, 1806, Hannah Orcutt, who died on 

February 13, 1828. He died on March 6, 1845, and his widow married 

Holbrook, of East Randolph. Phebe Edson 570 married Ira Bryant. 

276. William, son of William ii8 and Martha (Howard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plyrnouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on September 17, 
1767, married there on July 11, 1790, Mary Randall. She died 
and he married in the town of Bridgewater on March 22, 181 2, 
Hannah, daughter of Abiah and Eunice (Howard) Packard, and 
widow of Zadock Perkins. He died in 1849, ^''^'^ she on February 
I, 1852. 

Children by first wife : 

572. David. 

573. Amasa. 

574. Milly. 

575. Ruby. 

576. Abigail. 

577. Abi. 

578. Patty. 

579. Mary Randall. 

580. Mehetabel White. 

Ruby 575 married, in 1814, Samuel Spear, of Randolph; Abigail 576, in 
1 816, Ebenezer Crocker, of Easton; Abi 577, on May 11, 1823, Cyrus Howard. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 499 

William Edson 276, yeoman, of Bridgewater, made his will 
on April 10, 1818, when all his children were living. The will 
was probated in November, 1849. 

277. Jennet, daughter of William 118 and Martha (Howard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, in r 769, married 
there, on March 26, 181 1, Seth, son of Henry and Abigail (White) 
Kingman, bom in 1757. Seth had married first, in 1787, Judith 
Washburn, who died in 1809. 

Child: 

581. Elbridgc Kingman, born in 1812. 

278. Levi, son of Seth 119 and Irene (Howard) Edson, bom 
in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Connecticut, 
New England, on March 27, 1752, married there on October 29, 
1783, Mary Washbum. 

Children : 

582. Levi, boni in the town of Stafford on August 6, 1784. 

583. Mary, bom in the town of Stafford on August 28, 1785. 
581. .Sarah, born in the town of Stafford on November 16, 1787. 

585. Lucy, born in the town of Stafford on December 22, 1788. 

586. Lucy, bom in the town of Stafford on May 3, 1791. 

587. Huldah, born in the town of Stafford on Jttne 7, 1793. 

588. Daniel, born in the town of Staft'ord on March 24, 1798. 

589. Lyman, born in the town of Stafford on March 20, 1800. 

On April 9, 1798, Levi Edson 278, the father, took the oath of 
fidelity to the State of Connecticut as required by law. 

281. Benjamin, son of Seth 119 and Irene (Howard) Edson, 
bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, New England, on January 26, 1758, married (ist), in 
that place, on November 13, 1783, Dinah Washbum. She died 
in the town of Stafford, on April 25, 1784, and lie married there 
(2d), on February 23, 1786, Anna Johnson. He died in the 
town of Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., on July i, 1843, ^^'^^^ ^^^^ 
in the same place, on February 7, i860, aged ninety-five years 
eleven months and seven days. 

Child by first wife : 

590. Dinah, bom in the town of Stafford on April i(>, i 7S4. 

Children by second wife : 

591. Edna, bom in the town of Stafford on March 2<). i 7S7. 

592. Elam, bom in the town of Stafford on May 24, 17S9. 

593. Irene, born in the town of Stafford on Seplembor 26, 1791. 

594. Martin, born in the town of Stafford on .March 11, 1794. 



500 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

595. Dorcas, bom in the town of Stafford on June 20, 1796. 

596. Julia, born in the town of Stafford on June 24, 1797. 

597. Caroline, bom in the town of Stafford, on April 18, 1802. 

598. Freeman Willard, born in the town of Stafford on August 17, 1804. 
Edna 591 married James Hewlett; Irene 593 married Joseph Sheldon; 

Dorcas 595 married (ist) B. Saxbury, and (2d) Joseph Howe; and Caroline 
597 married Hill. Elam 592 lived in Jamestown, N. Y. 

On May i, 1780, Benjamin Edson, the father, took the oath 
of fidelity to the State of Connecticut as required by law. In 
1805, he sold "the Springs property, in the town of Stafford, 
Tolland County, Connecticut, and moved to Tyringham, Berk- 
shire County, Massachusetts, thence, in 1808, to Great Barring- 
ton, in that county, and, in 18 10, to the town of Huntsville [in 
1830, the town of Otego], Otsego County, New York, where he 
lived until his death. On July i, 1819, he was placed on the 
pension list of the National Government, to draw annually 
ninety -six dollars, beginning on May i, 181 8, having served as 
a private in the Second Connecticut Line Regiment in the War 
of the Revolution." 

282. Seth, son of Seth 119 and Irene (Howard) Edson, bom 
in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Connecticut, 
New England, on January 12, 1761, married Desire Comstock. 
She died on December 19, 1843, ^^cl he on October 12, 1849. 

Children : 

599. Mary, born on May 25, 1785. 

600. Cyrus, bom on May 13, 1787. 

601. Cynthia, born on April 21, 1789. 

602. Anthia, born on April 22, 1791. 

603. Guy, born on March 19, 1794. 

604. Harley, bom in Tyringham, Berkshire County, Mass., on February 12, 

1796. 

605. Orrin, born on May 16, 1798. 

606. George, born on July 6, 1800. 

607. Phebe, born on September 3, 1802. 

608. Luther, born on May 8, 1805. 

609. Hiram, born on August 24, 1807. 

610. Rufus, born on August 27, 1809. 

611. James, born on June 10, 1812, 

Mary 599 married Moffit; Cyrus 600 died June 4, 1787; Phebe 607 

married David Blatchley. 

On June 21, 1837, Seth Edson 282, of Coles Hill, Broome 
Coimty, N. Y., sold to Hiram Edson, of the same place, for one 
hundred and fifty dollars, fifty-two acres of land, lying in the 
town of Colesville, "beginning at the northeast corner of lot 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 501 

number forty-three, on a tract of land commonly known and 
distinguished as the Watts Patent." 

On July 8, 1837, i^^ ^i- conveyance so dated, Hiram Edson, of 
the town of Coles ville, is named as the party of the first ])arl, 
and Seth Edson and his wife Desire, the parties of the second 
part. 

Under the act of Congress of June 7, 1832, Scth Edson, of 
Broome County, N. Y., was enrolled on March 26, 1833, a war 
pensioner of the National Government, lia\-ing as a private served 
in the War of the Revolution in the Connecticut Continental Line 
regiment commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Canfield, at 
West Point, in September, 1781. He received annually eighty 
dollars, beginning on March 4, 1831. In the list of pensioners of 
the census of June i, 1840, he is named as residing "with S. 
Edson, Colesville, Broome County, N. Y." 

284. Relief, daughter of Ichabod 120 and Jemima (Packard) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on September 8, 
1 76 1, married there, on November 20, 1777, Oliver, son of Jacob 
and Dorothy .(Perkins) Packard. She died, and he married 
Amy, daughter of John Hawes, of Stoughton. She died on July 
6, 1843, aged eighty-two years. 

Children of Relief: 

612. Vesta Packard, born in 177S. 

613. Jacob Packard, born in 17S0. 

614. Jesse Packard, born on September 28, 1782. 

285. Joanna, daughter of Ichabod 120 and Jemima (Packard) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New Engkmd, on April 20, 1 7O5. 
married there, on October k), 1788, Tliomas, son of Thomas and 
Mary (Howard) Packard, born on August 20, 1764. He died on 
December 16, 18 18, and she on October 18, 1838. 

Children : 

615. Azor Packard, born in 1700. 

616. -Vustin Packard, born on January 15, 1801. 

2S(). Nathan, son of I^^benczcr 121 and Lucy (Packard) 
Edson, born in tlio town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on April q. 1753, 
married there, on May 28, 1778, Susanna, daughter of Ephraim 
and Elizabeth (Wood) Allen, bom in 1761. She died and lie 



502 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

married Martha probably in 1786. He died in October, 

t8oi, at Rehoboth, Bristol County, Mass. 
Children : 

617. Lucy. 

618. Allen. 

619. Nathan. 

620. Martha. 

621. Susanna. 

622. Cromwell. 

When Nathan 286 made his will in the town of Rehoboth, 
Bristol County, Mass., on May 9, 1801, his wife Martha, and the 
six children were living ; Martha, Susanna, and Cromwell being 
then under fourteen years of age. His will was probated on 
November 3, 1801. 

306. Joel, son of Nathaniel 125 and Joanna (Snow) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on March 4, 1763, married 
(ist), in that place, about April 2, 1 788, Hannah, daughter of Solo- 
mon and Hannah (Bailey) Packard, bom in 1764. She died in 
the town of Bridgewater, on December 7, 1818, and he married 
there (2d), on January 18, 1820, Lurana Jones, of Pembroke. 
He died in the town of Bridgewater on April 26, 1830. 

Children by first wife : 

623. Albert, born in the town of Bridgewater on Augvist 20, 1789. 

624. PUny, bom in the town of Bridgewater in 1790. 

625. Ard, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 11, 1792. 

626. Pliny, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 25, 1795. 

627. Joel, born in the town of Bridgewater on February 2, 1797. 

Albert Edson 623 married, in the town of Bridgewater, on November 10, 
1S17, Abigail, davtghter of Uriah and Abigail (Kingman) Brett, born in 1793. 
She died in 1829. Pliny 624 died on July 9, 1793. 

Pliny Edson 626 married (ist) in the town of Bridgewater, on September 
23, 1819, Lucy Reed. She died on December 22, 1825, and he married (2d), 
on June 6, 1826, Mehetabel Reed. They lived in East Bridgewater. Joel 627 
died on March 9, 1797. 

On May 4, 1830, Letter of Administration on the estate of 
Joel Edson of East Bridgewater was granted to Lurana Edson 
of East Bridgewater. 

307. Eunice, daughter of Nathaniel 125 and Joanna (Snow) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on April 4, 1765, 
married there, on July 14, 1786, Richard, son of Jeremiah and 
Tabitha (Leavitt) Thayer, born in 1759. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMI^^ICA 503 

Children : 

62S. Earl Thayer, born in 1787. 

629. Susanna Thayer, born in 1790. 

630. Huldah Edson Thayer, born in 1795. 

631. Richard Thayer, born in 179S. 

312. Nathaniel, son of Nathaniel 125 and Joanna (Snow) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on May 9, 1777, married there, on September 30, 1801, 
Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth (Gannett) Hay- 
ward, bom in 1753. 

Children : 

632. Warren Anson Kendrick, born in the town of Bridgewater on Marcli 22 

1803. 

633. Nathaniel Kendrick, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 6, 1805. 

634. Elizabeth Howard Kendrick, born in the town of Bridgewater on Janu- 

ary 22, 1807. 

635. Cornelius Warren Kendrick, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 19, 

1809. 

636. Joanna Kendrick, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 23, 181 1 . 

637. Newton Kendrick, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 23, 181 4. 

638. Fidelia Kendrick, bom in the town of Bridgewater on May 25, 1817. 

639. Horatio Kendrick, born in the town of Bridgewater on May 2, 1S20. 
Warren x\nson Kendrick 632 died on April 4, 1803. 

320. Huldah, daughter of Timothy 127 and Lydia (Joy) 
Edson, bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of 
Connecticut, New England, on April 2t„ 1752, married there, on 
March 16, 1775, a Peter Edson. 

Children : 

640. John, born in the town of Stafford on July 5, 1776. 

641. Miriam, born in the town of Stafford on January 19, 1778. 

642. Hannah, born in the town of Stafford on February 12, 17S1. 

643. Trine, born in the town of Stafford on June 30, 1784. 

644. Minerva, born in the town of Stafford on May 3, 17 89. 

On May i, 1780, Peter Edson took the oath of fidelity to the 
State of Connecticut as required by law. 

Huldah Edson was living in the town of Randolph, C^range 
County, in 1832. 

321. Timothy, son of Timothy 127 and Lydia (Joy) Edson, 
bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, coh^ny of Con- 
necticut, New England, on March 26. 1754, married there 
Susanna, daughter of Lieutenant Solomon and Mary (Rockwell) 
Orcutt, bom in the town of Stafford, in 175S. lie died in the 
town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on June kj, iS^i. and 
she also there on l'\'l)ruary 17, 1847. 



504 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Children : 

645. Timothy, bom in the town of Stafford on March 20, 17 78. 

646. Miriam, born in the town of Randolph, Vt., on May 25, 1780. 

647. Leonard, born on February 4, 1783. 

648. Luther, born on March 4, 1785. 

649. John, born on April 9, 1790. 

650. Orrin [Oren], born on January 11, 1793. 

651. Alvin, bom in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., October 10, 

1796. 

Miriam 646 married Isaac Reed, and died childless. His first wife was Mary 
Blanchard. 

Leonard 647 died in Buffalo, N. Y. He married, February 8, 1807, at 
Randolph, Vt., Roxalana Woodward, and had a son Hial. 

Lvither 648 died July 26, 1856, at Randolph, unmarried. 

Orrin 650 died at St. Johns, P. Q.; married there, in May, 1842, Orilla Booth, 
widow of Oliver Carpenter. 

Captain Timothy 321 was chosen, in November, 1813, one of 
a committee to select a site for a schoolhouse in the town of 
Randolph. He and his wife were members of Christian Church 
in West Randolph, organized January 4, 181 7, by Elder Benja- 
min Putnam, 4 

322. Calvin, son of Timothy 127 and Lydia (Joy) Edson, 
born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, New England, on July 14, 1756, married (ist), in that 
place, on December 7, 1780, Charity, daughter of Martha and 
Deborah Thompson, born on May 14, 1749. She died in the 
town of Stafford on October 7, 1797. He married (2d) Azuba 
Greene, bom on May 25, 1777, died September 21, 1827, at 
Stafford, Conn. She was sister to J. Taylor Greene, who married 
Eleanor Edson 653. Calvin died November 26, 1828. 

Children : 

652. Elizabeth, born in the town of Stafford on August lo, 1781. 

653. Eleanor, born in the town of Stafford on February 5, 1783. 

654. Calvin, born in the town of Stafford on Avtgust 29, 1791. 

Elizabeth 652 died in the town of Stafford on May 9, 1792. Eleanor 653 
married John Taylor Greene, born in 1777. She died December 27, 1857, at 
Stafford, Conn. Calvin 654, the only son, died September 20, 1828, un- 
married. 

323. Josiah, son of Timothy 127 and Lydia (Joy) Edson, 
born in the town of Staft'ord, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, New England, in 1758, married there, on July i, 1779, 
Sarah, daughter of Isaac and Susanna (Phelps) Pinney, bom on 
December 25, 1756. She died in the town of Randolph, Orange 
County, Vermont, on December 16, 1805, and he also there on 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 505 

October 27, 1819, aged sixty-one years. Isaac was a descendant 
of John Pinney, who came over in 1630. 
Children : 

f)5.5. Alexander, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, on October ig, 1780. 

056. Joseph, born in the Iciwn of Ran(l(>]])li, Orange County, \'t., mi March 3, 
17S2. 

657. Lydia, born in the town of Randolph, Orange Countv, Vt., on March 10, 

1784. 

658. Josiah, born in the ti>\vn i)f Rand<>:]ili, Orange Covuity, Vt., on \\>r\\ 13, 

I 7 86. 

659. Sarah, born in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on October 

27, 17S8. 

660. Susan, born in the town of Randolph, Orange County, \'t., on December 

25, 17Q1. 

661. John Joy, born in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on May 27, 

1794- 

662. Harrictta Albina, born in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., 

on April 13, 1707. 

663. Daniel Sherwood, born in the town of Randolph. Orange County, Vt., 

on March 10, 1799. 

664. Lydia Alexander, born in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., 

in Avigust, i8or. 
Alexander 655 and Lydia 657 died on the same day, March 6, iSoi, of the 
same disease, scarlet fever. A double headstone still marks their grave, with 
the following inscri])tion, composed by their fatln'r: 

'"In love we lived, together died. 
And here we now lie, side by side. 
Jesus died our souls to save 
And placed our bodies in one grave. 
Here we shall sleep till God commands 
Us to come forth, with hand in hand." 

Lydia Alexander 664, having been born ""a few months after the death of 
her oldest brother and sister," was so named in memory of them. 

Susan 660, the third davighter, died unmarried, in 1840, in Auburn, Mich. 

Josiah Edson 323, the father, having enlisted on January 26, 
1777, in Ca])tain Amos Walbridge's company in the Second Con- 
necticut Continental Line Regiment, was honorably discharged 
on January 25, 1780. In the following year, he removed to \'cr- 
mont with his wife and son Alexander 655, and settled in Orange 
Cotmty, on a large tract of land that is known as "the old Edsim 
place." Not long after his settlement in WrniiMit, lie organized 
a company of volunteers, and, as captain "f il, ]HU-sued a body 
of hostile Indians "beyond the frontier." Subsequently he was 
"elected colonel of the local regiment (U' militia," which was 



5o6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

highly efficient in defending that part of Vermont from maraud- 
ing Indians. 

In 1 791 he was a member of the Vermont Convention, in 
session from January 10 to February 14, in Barrington, assembled 
there "for adopting the Constitution of the United States"; he 
being a representative from Orange County. 

In 1792, 1793, 1794, and, 1796 he was a member of the House of 
Representatives of the State of Vermont. In 1797, 1798, 1799, 
1800, 1 80 1, and 1802, he was sheriff of Orange County, Vermont. 

By an act passed by the House of Representatives of the 
State of Vermont, on November i, 1798, Israel Converse, Josiah 
Edson, Stephen Fish, and Timothy Mitchell were granted the 
exclusive right of running a stage coach from Windsor to Bur- 
lington for the term mentioned in the grant. 

Under the act of Congress of March 18, 1818, Josiah Edson, 
residing in the State of Vermont, was enrolled a pensioner, hav- 
ing served in the war of the Revolution in Captain Amos Wal- 
bridge's company. He became a corporal on February i, 1778, 
and was promoted to the rank of sergeant, on January 9, 1779. 

He was a prominent Ancient Free and Accepted Mason, and 
was for a time Grand Master of the State of Vermont. Upon 
the death of his wife, in 1805, he entrusted the management of 
his affairs to his son Josiah, and passed much of his leisure time 
in Aurelius, New York, where several of his children were living. 
Dying at the age of threescore and one years, his remains were 
entombed in the Randolph burial ground, where those of his 
wife and two children had been entombed. 

324. Eliab, son of Timothy 127 and Lydia (Joy) Edson, bom 
in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Connecticut, 
New England, on October 27, 1760, married there, on August 23, 
1787, Prudence Whittaker, bom in 1767. She died in the town 
of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on June 20, 1829, and he also 
there on November 27, 1833. 

Children : 

6G.5. Calvin, boni in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., on March 4, 
1788. 

666. Oliver, born in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., on Decem- 

ber 20, 1789. 

667. Eliab, born in the town of Stafford. Tolland County, Conn., on February 

9, 1792. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 507 

6ns. Elizabeth, born in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., on Feb- 

rviar\' iS. 1794. 
668a. Alexander, M.D., born in the town f)f Randolph, Vl., on l-Y-bruary 5, 1804. 
Eliab 667 died in the town of Randal].]!, Orange County, Vt., on May 6, 
1832. Alexander 668 a died February 13, 1847, New York City. 

Eliab Edson 324 the father, took the oath of FideHtv to the 
state of Connecticut, as required by law, on April 13, 1795. 

Under the act of Congress of June 7, 1832, l-:iiab Edson 324 
residing in Orange County, Vermont, was enrolled a Revolu- 
tionary pensioner on August 20, 1833, with pay beginning on 
March 4, 1831, being an annual allowance of forty-four dollars 
and sixty-five cents. He, as a private, had served in the Con- 
necticut Continental Line. 

327. Mary, daughter of Timothy 127 and Lydia (Joy) Edson, 
boni at Stafford, Conn., June 22, 1767, married there, October 
28, 1784, Ebenezer Johnson, l)orn April, 1765, and died April 2, 
1 817. She died in Stafford, January 8, 1848. 

Children : 

668 B. Clarissa Johnson, born on February 7. 1786. 
668 c. Celia Johnson, born on September 23, 1787. 
668 D. Mary Johnson, bom on October 26, 1788. 
668 E. Cyril Johnson, bom on July 24, 1791. 
668 F. Marcia Johnson, born on November 20, 1793. 
668 G. Selenda Johnson, bom on December 29, 1799. 
668 H. Nathaniel Johnson, born on October 15, 180 1. 
668 I. Timothy Edson Johnson, liorn on June i, 1804. 
668 J. Lovisa Johnson, bom on August 27, 1807. 
668 K. Ebenezer Joy Johnson, born on May 28, 1810. 

Clarissa Johnson died January 10, 1864; married, about 1824, Joseph Gold, 
born in 1794, died February 29, 1844. They had no children. 

Celia died December 7, 1787. 

Mary died October 3, 1856; married. July, 181 1, Eli House, son of Israel 
and Hannah (Washburn) House. They had seven children. 

Cyril died March 8, 1848: married (ist). in July. 181 5, Salome Cady, and 
had a daughter; married (2d), November 30, 1826, Clarissa McKenney, born 
March 27, 1802, died March i, 1889, and had nine children. 

Marcia died September 30, 1855: married (ist) Royal Ellis, born in i7()2, 
died March 18, 1829, and had seven ehilih-in; married (2d) Osandcr Orcutt, 
born July 19, 1792, died July 23, 1871, son of John. 

Selenda died February 26, 1885; married, in 1816. Captain Warren (Jrcutl, 
bom in October, 1792, son of Stephen and Molly (Washburn) Orcutt, and had 
nine children. 

Nathaniel died August 20, 1S72: married, November 16, 1826, Miriam Cady, 
bom March 5, 1804, died January 20, 187 1, and had four children. 

Timothy E. died September 5, 1884; married, October, 183S, Harriet Sjiragtic, 
born February 14, 1820, died in 1882, and had one child. 



5o8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Lovisa died September 13, 1876; married, February 26, 1S35, Loren Russell 
Mclntire, born November 13, 1807, died May 29, 1876, and had three children. 
Ebenezer J. died May 10, 1837; married Nancy Maria Backus, of Lee, Mass. 

328. Abijah, son of Abijah 129 and Susanna (Snow) Edson, 
bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of Con- 
necticut, New England, on April 10, 1748, married in the town 
of Hardwick, Worcester County, province of Massachusetts Bay, 
on June 10, 1762, Hannah, daughter of Joseph Ruggles. 

Children : 

669. Cushman, born on December 11, 1763. 

; 670. Nathaniel, born on April i, 1765. 

' 671. Susanna, born on March 10, 1767. 

672. Timoth}^ Alden, born on August 7, 1769. 

Cushman 669, the eldest son, called "colonel," died in Charleston, South 
Carolina, in 1797. 

Abijah Edson was residing in the town of Hardwick, Worces- 
ter County, in 1775. He was a soldier in the Revolutionary 
War, and was reported as having died at Valley Forge, on April 

15, 1778. 

331. Timothy, son of Jonathan 130 and Mehetabel (Lilly) 
Edson, born in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of 
Connecticut, New England, in 1750, married (ist), in Whately, 
Franklin County, Massachusetts, on December 23, 1790, Hannah, 
daughter of Ebenezer and Sarah (Tute) Bardwell, of Whately, 
born in 1768. She died there on September 13, 1798, and he 
married (2d), in Whately, on October 24, 1799, Mercy, daughter 
of Deacon Oliver and Rebecca (Smith) Graves, born on August 
27, 1 771. He died in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on Septem- 
ber 30, 1834, and she also there on March 25, 1841. 

Children : 

673. Justus, baptized in Whately, Mass., on July 15, 1793. 

674. Sarah. 

675. Elijah. 

676. Hannah. 

677. Linus. 

678. Electa. 

679. Elizabeth. 

680. Chester. 

Colonel Justus Edson 673 married (ist) Mary Paine, and (2d) Cham- 
berlain, a widow; Elijah Edson 675 married Dency, daughter of William White; 
Hannah 676 married Norman Goodale; Linus 677 married in western New 
York; Electa 678 married John Pember Edson; Elizabeth 679 married Hiram 
Webb ; Chester Edson 680 married Mary Wilder. 

333. Jonathan, son of Jonathan 130 and Mehetabel (Lilly) 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 509 

Edson, bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford County, colony of 
Connecticut, New England, married in Whateh', Franklin 
County, Mass., Rebecca, daughter of Deacon Oliver and Rebecca 
(Smith) Graves, born on October 19, 1756. 
Children : 

t;Sl. Anna, born in Whatcly, Franklin County, Mass., about 1783. 

682. Salmon, baptized in Whately, Franklin County, Mass.. on June 25, 

1786. 

6.S3. Jonathan, baptized in Whately, Franklin County, Mass., about 1788. 

6S4. S()]ihia, baptized in Whately, Franklin County, Mass., about 1790. 

()S.'5. Lucius, born in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., in 1795. 

686. Elizabeth, born in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., in 1797. 

Anna 681 married Joel Brown; vSalmon Edson 682 married Mary White; 
Jonathan Edson 6S3 married Mary, daughter of Captain Amasa Edson; Lucius 
685 married Matilda Ainsworth. 

Jonathan Edson 333, the father, built, about 1785, a home 
on Day Hill, in Whately, where Chester Bardwell subsequently 
lived. He was a Revolutionary soldier from Whately. 

337. Amasa, son of Jonathan 136 and Mehetabel (Lilly) Edson, 
bom in the town of Whately, Franklin County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on April 13, 1763, married 
(ist), in that place, on December 14, 1786, Hannah, daughter 
of Oliver and Hannah (Gillett) Morton, bom on March 12, 1762. 
She died in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on July 30, 1S26, 
and he married (2d), in Rochester, Vt., Martha, daughter of 

Justin Morgan, and widow of Thatcher. She died in 

Brookfield, on January 6, 1837, ^^^d he married (3d) the widow 
Urzah (Lilly) Torrey, of Bethel, Vt., his cousin. He died on 
February 9, 1853. 

Children : 

687. Jerah, born in the town of Whately, Mass., on April i i, 17SS. 

688. Harris, born in the town of Whately, Mass., on August 21, 1791. 

689. Mary ("Polly"), born in the town of Whately, Mass., on September 29. 

1793- 

690. Oliver, born in the town of Whately, Mass., on September 22, 1796. 

69L Lura, born in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on September i, 179S. 

692. Emily, born in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on December 14. iSoo. 

693. Sojjhila, bom in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on Novemlier 13, 1S03. 

694. Hannah, bom in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt.. on October 10. 1S06. 
Oliver 690 Edson died unmarried, in 1873; Lura 691 married Spencer 

Graves; Emily 692 married Caleb A. Stratton ; Sophila 603, Elijah Lyman; and 
Hannah 694, Reuben Peck. 

Captain Amasa Edson 337, after serving in the War of the 
Revolution, returned to the town of Whately, Franklin County, 



5IO EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Mass., where he married Hannah Morton, and whence he moved 
in 1797, with his family, to Brookfield, Orange County, Vt. 
There he purchased four hundred acres of land and for fourteen 
years gave his attention to the cultivation of it. He then opened 
a public house which he kept for more than forty years. His 
eight children settled in Brookfield, within three miles of the 
homestead, and for more than forty years attended the same 
church with their father. "Captain Edson was a man of much 
energy and perseverance, and of good religious principles ; public- 
spirited, zealous in the cause of education, prompt in supporting 
the Gospel, and liberal to all objects of Christian charity." 

Under the Act of Congress of June 7, 1832, he was enrolled 
on October 25, 1832, a Revolutionary War pensioner, having 
served as a private in the Massachusetts militia. From March 
4, 1838, he annually received twenty dollars. 

344. Samuel, son of Samuel 151 and Anna (Hall) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on February 11, 1775, married 
(ist) in that place, on January 20, 1797, Hannah Ripley, of 
Easton. He married (2d), in 1801, Mary Barnes. 

Child: 

695. Lucinda. 

349. Freeman, son of Jonah 154 and Elizabeth Edson, bom 
in Westmoreland, N. H., on September 24, 1791, married (ist), 
in Keene, N. H., Judith Mason. She died and he married (2d), in 
Scottsville, Monroe County, N. Y., Mary Hanford. He married 
(3d) Thankful Olmstead Goodrich. He died in Scottsville, in 
1883. 

Children by first wife : 

696. Freeman Mason. 

697. Emeline. 

By second wife. 

698. Elizabeth M. 

699. Hanford Abram. 

Emeline Edson 697 married Elmer H. Garbutt; Elizabeth M. 698, Asa C. 
Finney. Rev. Hanford A. Edson 699 was mentioned, as were the two married 
daughters, in the will of the father, made at Scottsville, on September 29, 1873, 
and probated on August 16, 1883. 

Freeman Edson 349 began studying medicine in the office of 
Dr. Amos Twitchell, in the town of Keene, N. H., and completed 
his course in Yale College, in 18 14. He settled in Scottsville, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 511 

town of Caledonia, Monroe County, N. Y., wlicrc lie built liim- 
self a home in 1816, and practised his profession for nearly 
seventy years, (^n the organization of the Monroe County 
Medical Society, on May 9, 182 1, he was elected its censor. 

350. Cynthia, daughter of Jonali 154 and Elizabeth (Balch) 
Edson, bom, probably, in Addison County, Vt., in 1799, married 
in 18 1 8, Elkanah Blakesle. She died in 1871. 

Children : 

700. Freeman Blakesle, born in 1819. 

701. Mary Blakesle, born in 1S21. 

702. Sylvanus Blakesle, born in 1825. 

703. Elizabeth Blakesle, born in 1827. 

704. Merritt Blakesle, born in 1831. 

705. Dean Blakesle, born in 1837. 

Freeman 700 married Mary A. Woodward; Mary 701 married, in 1S44, 
Truman Potter; Sylvanus 702 married, in 1851, Mary Mills; Elizabeth 703 
married, in 1847, Osear Potter; Merritt 704 married, in 1854, Emily Ilartson; 
Dean 705 married, in i860, Prvidy Negus. These children all were alive in 
1894; Truman Potter and Oscar Potter were dead. 

351. Delana, daughter of Jonah 154 and Elizabeth (Balch) 
Edson, boni, probably in Addison County, Vt., about 1801, 

married (ist), William Hubbcll, and tnarried (2(1) Goodrich, 

and died about 1869. 

Children : 

70G. Almira Hubbell, born in 1818. 
707. Henry Hubbell. 
70S. William Hubbell. 

709. Mary Hubbell. 

710. Eli Hvibbell. 

711. Olive Hubbell. 

712. Lewis Httbbcll. 

352. Elizabeth, daughter of Jonah 154 and l-^lizabeth (Balch) 
Edson, boni probably in Addison County, \'l., about 1804, 

married Lilly. Ho died and she married Zelotus Le^^'^s. 

She died in 1882. 

Children : 

713. Chloe Lilly. 

714. Harlow Lilly. 

353. Chelous [Chellus], son of Jonali 154 and I-^lizabeth 
(Balch) Edson, bom ]n-(il)al)ly in .Xddison Count)', \'l., in 1806. 
married, in 1827. Juliana Bloomfield. He died in i S()o, and she 
in 1890. 

Children : 

71."). Philander born in 1828. 



512 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

716. Phidelia [Fidelia], born in 1830. 

717. Delana, born in 183 1. 

718. Abner Balch, born in 1S33. 

719. Eber, born in 1835. 

720. Lafayette E., bom in 1837. 

721. Juliaette, born in 1839. 

722. Sarah, bom in 1841. 

723. Rachel, born in 1S43. 

724. Eliza, born in 1S45. 

725. Mary Elizabeth, born in 1S47. 

726. Matilda, born in 1849. 

727. Perly, born on April 6, 1852. 

Abner Balch Edson 718 was in the Eighty-third Regiment. Pennsylvania Vol- 
unteers, for three years and ten months, coming out a captain. Eber Edson 
719 was an early gold hunter, crossing the plains with an emigrant train. 
Perly Edson 727, postmaster at Lincolnville, Crawford County, Pa. 

Chelous 353 Edson was postmaster in Bloomfield Township, 
Crawford County, Penn. Also a justice of the peace. 

356. Chester, son of Jonah 154 and EHzabeth (Balch) Edson, 
boni probably in Addison County, Vt., about 1813, married 
Mary Fuller. He died in 1839. 

Children : 

728. A son. 

729. Thomas. 

Thomas Edson 729 removed to the West and died there, leaving one son, 
C. P. Edson, Aberdeen, S. D. 

357. Esther, daughter of Jonah 154 and Elizabeth (Balch) 
Edson, bom probably in Addison County, Vt., about 1816, mar- 
ried David Hartson. She died on November 10, 1841. 

Child: 

730. Emily Hartson. 

361. Jonah, son of Noah 157 and Mary (WilHs) Edson, born 
probably in West Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Mass., on 
March 18, 1792, married, in East Bridgewater, on April 27, 1819, 
Jennet, daughter of Daniel and Jennet (Mitchell) Bryant, bom 
in Falmouth, Cumberland County, Me., on Janaury 9, 1795. 
He died in East Bridgewater on December 7, 1874, and she in 
the same place on February 4, 1880. 

Children : 

731. Fanny Bryant, born in East Bridgwater on June 27, 1820. 

732. Henry, born in East Bridgewater on September 2, 1822. 

733. James, bom in East Bridgewater on May 9, 1824. 

734. George bom in East Bridgewater on August 2, 1827. 

735. John, born in East Bridgewater on October 24, 1829. 

736. WiUiam, born in East Bridgwater on April 30, 1832. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 513 

737. Seth Bryant, bom in East Bridgewatcr on April 24. iS.^5. 

James 733 died in East Bridgewatcr, in October. i<S26; and John 735, also 
there, on August 27, 1S56; George 734 married in Hallowell, Me., on October q. 
1861, Mary Ann Parker Weld, daughter of Ezra Grcenleaf and Mary Ann 
(Parker) Weld, born in Gardiner. Me., on Fel)ruary 26, 1.S31. He died in East 
Bridgewater, Mass., on April 14. i,S6v 

363. Ephraim, son of Noah 157 and .Mary (Willis) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plvmoutli County, Mass., on 
January 25, 1797, inarried there, in September, 1823, Mary, 
daughter of Simeon and Hannah (Bartlett) Howard, of West 
Bridgewater, bom on May 3, 1797. Slie died in 1855, '"""^ '"i*^' ^'"^ 
1885. 

Children : 

738. Charles, bom in the town of Bridgewater on Febmary S, 1827. 

739. Martha, bom in the town of Bridgewater on April 22. i82q. 

740. Nathan, born in the town of Bridgewater on April 13, 1S31. 

741. Theodore, born in the town of Bridgewater on Maj'' 4, 1834. 

742. Mary, born in the town of Bridgewater on October 19, 1836. 

743. Ephraim Davis, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 24. 1841 . 

744. Sibyl, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 27, 1S45. 
Charles 738 died in 1S33, and Martha 731), in 1844. 

The house where Ephraim 363 Edson lived is now owned by 
Mary Edson, but is not occupied by her. It is one and a half 
miles south of the first meeting-house in Old Bridgewater; half 
a mile from the place where the house stood that had been occu- 
pied by his father Noah 157. 

383. Alfred, son of Nathan 160 and Mary (Hall) Edson, bom 
in Petersham, Worcester County, ]-)rovincc of Massachusetts Bay, 
New England, on November 13, 1774, married (ist), in 1796, 
Eunice Snow, and (2d), in Stockport, Madison County, X. Y., 
Lydia, daughter of OHver and Cyntliia (Jacques) Stewart, bom 
in Stockport, Madison County, in 1785. She dietl there about 
1823, and he also about 1826. 

Children : 

745. Etmiee, l)orn in Stockport, Madison County, .\. V. 
740. Robert S., born in Stockport, Madison County. X. ^'. 
747. Sarah, born in Stockport. Madison County, X. V. 

74S. Henry Wells, born in StockiMirt, Madi.son County, X. \'. 

749. WilUmb born in Stockport, Madison County, N. Y., on June 4. '>^«2- 

7.")(). Oliver Stewart, l)orn in Stockport, Madison County. X. V.. on .\ugusl i. 

I 8 I 3 . 
7.")1. Lydia, born in Stockport. Madi.son County. X. \'. 
7r)2. .Charlotte, born in Stockport, Madison County, X. V. 
7,53. Lavina, burn in Stockport, Madison County. X. V. 
33 



514 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

75'i. Samuel S., born in Stockport, Madison County, N. Y. 

755. Rudolphus, born in Stockport, Madison County, N. Y. 

384. Barnabas, son of Nathan i6o and Mary (Hall) Edson, 
bom in the town of Petersham, Worcester County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on February 27, 1776, married, 
in Oneida County, N. Y., in 1798, Anna, daughter of James 
Walsworth, bom in 1782. She died in the town of Batavia, 
Genesee County, New York, on March 12, 1844, and her remains 
were interred in the graveyard in Bethany, Genesee County. 
He died in the town of Batavia, on March 20, i860, and his body 
was buried in the cemetery at Davis' Comers, in the same county. 

Children : 

756. Mary (Polly), born in the town of Augusta, Oneida County, N. Y., Sep- 

tember 29, 1800. 

757. Gamaliel, bom in the town of Augusta, Oneida County, N. Y., in 1802. 

758. James L., born in the town of Augusta, Oneida County, N. Y. 

759. Lewis Morgan, born in the town of Augusta, Oneida Cou.nty, N. Y.. on 

February 22, 1807. 

760. Barnabas Hall, born in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on 

May 16, 1811. 

761. Cyrenus Chapin, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on 

December i, 181 3. 

762. Clarissa Ann, born in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on 

February 8, 1S16. 

763. Lticinda, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on August 

29, 1817. 

764. Arminda, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on Feb- 

ruary 4, 1 82 1. 
James L. 758 went to Michigan. 

The territory of Chautauqua County formed a part of the 
tract belonging to the Holland Land Company and they, to in- 
duce settlers to occupy it, offered sections of it for sale at prices 
ranging from one dollar and fifty cents to four dollars an acre. 
The town of Pomfret, taken from the town of Chautauqua on 
March 11, 1808, embraced the territory from which the town 
of Gerry was taken on June i, 1812, and from it the town of 
Charlotte was taken, in turn, on April 18, 1829. The land of 
this town formed the fourth township in the eleventh range. 
Among the original purchasers of lots in this township in 1809 
were in April, that year, Barnabas Cole, who bought lot thirty-six ; 
in May, Robert W. Seaver 379 and Barnabas Edson 384, lot thirty- 
seven, and William Devine, lot twenty-nine. " Charlotte Center 
was first settled by Robert W. Seaver, a soldier of the Revo- 



EDSOXS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 515 

lution. He. in the spring of 1809, with Bama. Edson, explored 
the town, then a wilderness, and selected ninety acres of land, 
which included the home of the late John Edmonds. Here Mr. 
Seaver settled. ... In the spring of 1809, William Devine 
also came in and settled upon the west part of lot twenty-nine, 
where he built a log house between the present site of the school- 
house and the highway. It was the first building erected at the 
Center." In 181 1 Barney Cole died and was buried at the Center. 
He was the first male person who died in the town. (History of 
Chautauqua County, New York. By Andrew W. Young. Buf- 
falo, N. Y., 1875, pp. 253, 254.) 

On December 2. 1833, Willem WilHnk and others of the 
Holland Land Company conveyed to Barney Edson, of Genesee 
County, N. Y., for two hundred and forty-six dollars and fifty 
cents, sixty acres of land, being part of lots eight, ten, and 
twelve, in the ninth section, in township twelve, first range. 

On Februar}^ 13, 1836, Barney Edson, and his wife Anna, of 
the to^^'n of Batavia, Genesee County, conveyed the same land, 
for two thousand four hundred dollars, to James P. Pendill. 
(Deeds, Book xxiv., p. 528; Book xxxviii., p. 85. Office of the 
Clerk of Genesee Coiinty, N. Y., in Batavia, N. Y.) 

386. Calvin, son of Nathan 160 and Mar\^ (Hall) Edson, bom 
in the town of Petersham, Worcester County, j\Iass., on June 10, 
1780, married Dorothy May, bom on December 5, 1782. He 

died and she married Inman, but had no child by him. 

She died on December 12, 1882, aged one hundred years and 
seven days. 

It has been suggested that there were sixteen children; only 
a few of them have been identified. 

Children : 

765. Calvin, born on September lo, 1805. 

766. John Gridley, bom on December 5, 1830. 

767. Lucy V., bom about 1S34. 

Calvin 765 man-ifd Margaret Vredenburgh. Hi.s son, Calvin Riley Edson. 
died September 4, I S80, aged forty-eight. (Bom 1S32.) His son. E. R. Edson, 
lives in Cleveland, O. 

John Gridley 766 lives in Cleveland. Ohio. 

Lucy V 767 married Theodore Sedgebur. and lives in Cleveland. 

Calvin 386 removed from Oneida County, N. Y., to Cleveland, 
in 1836. 

388. Olive, daughter of Nathan 160 and ]\Iary (Hall) Edson, 



5i6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

born in the town of Petersham, Worcester County, Mass., on 
May 24, 1785, married, in Augusta, Oneida County, N. Y., Zenas 
Cole, bom in Chesterfield, Mass., on February 8, 1789. He died 
in Springfield, Clark County, O., on April 22, 1850, and she in 
the same place on March 4, 1851. 
Children : 

768. Zenas Cole, born in Smithfield, Madison County, N. Y., on September 3, 

1815. 

769. Mary Montagne Cole, born in Smithfield, Madison Comity, N. Y., on 

September 1, 1S18. 

Zenas Cole 768 died in Smithfield, on September 19, 1S17. 

Mary Montague Cole 769 was married in Cazenovia, Madison County, N. Y., 
on September 15, 1836, by the Right Rev. Beverly Waugh, Bishop of the 
Methodist Protestant Episcopal Church, to the Rev. Perlee B. Wilber, born at 
"Wilber Hill,-' near MilllDrook, Dutchess County, N. Y., on December 21, 
1806. He was president of Wesleyan Female College, at Cincinnati, O., from 
September, 1842, to June 11, 1859, where he died on June 11, 1S59. Plis widow 
died in Cincinnati, O., on July 16. 1894. 

393. Jesse, Rev., son of Jesse 174 and Susanna (Howard) 
Edson, bom in Ashfield, Franklin County, province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, New England, on February 12, 1773, married, on 
September 28, 1794, Rebecca, daughter of Lemuel and Abigail 
(White) Taylor, bom in Buckland, Franklin County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, on August 23, 1774. He died in Halifax, 
Vermont, on December 14, 1805. She married, (2d,) on Sep- 
tember 2, 1 8 10, Captain Edward Adams, of Coleroin, Mass., and 
died on April 9, 1847. 

Children : 

770. Rowena. 

771. Rebecca, bom on November 26, 1799. 

772. Anianda, bom on July 10, 1801. 

773. Almira. 
77-i. Susanna. 

Rebecca Ed.son 771 died on February 19, 1805, and Amanda 772 on March 
28, 1810. I 

Rev. Jesse Edson 393 was graduated from Dartmouth College, 
on August 27, 1792 ; licensed, in 1795, to preach, and ordained at 
Halifax, Vermont, November 23, 1796. 

394. Prudence, daughter of Obed 176 and Prudence (Fiske) 
Edson, bom probably, in the town of Ashfield, Franklin County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, on March 4, 1771, 
married, on October 12, 1788, in the town of Lanesborough, 
Berkshire County, Mass., Rev. Daniel Burhans, second son of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 517 

Henry and Zcriali (Ilallj Burhans, born in Sherman, pro\'ince of 
Connecticut, on July 7, 1762. She ched in Newtown, Conn., on 
May 5, 1803 (?), and Mr. Burhans married (2d), on November 4, 
1804 (^). Catharine Silvester, daughter of Hon. Peter Silvester 
and Jane \^an Schaack, of Kinderhook, New York, who died 
on March 16, 1823. On November 19, 1823, he married (3d) 
Hannah Mansfield, daughter of Doctor Mansfield, and widow of 
the Rev. Edward Blakeslee, who died, on March 12, 1840. He 
married (4th), on May 20, 1852, in Philadelphia, Penn., Anna 
Lane, widow of Doctor Noxon. 
Children : 

775. Prudence Sojihia Burhans, born in the town of Lanesborough on Decem- 

ber II, I 780. 

776. Daniel Edson Burhans, born in the town of Lancsborough on October 

29, 1791 

The degree of doctor of divinity was conferred on the Rev. 
Daniel Burhans by Trinity College in 1831. In 1832 he 
took charge of St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church, in Plv- 
mouth. Conn., and after a few years left Plymouth for Oxford, 
where he remained until 1839. He remained in the ministry 
until his eighty-first year, and died at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., on 
December 30, 1853, in the ninety-first year of his age, being 
then the oldest clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
America. 

395. Obed, son of Obed 176 and Prudence (Fiske) Edson, 
bom probably in the town of Ashfield, b^ranklin County, province 
of Massachusetts Bay, on May 6, 1772, married (ist), prior to 
1793, Aurora Higgins. She died of smallpox, in Coopcrstcnvn, 
Otsego County, N. Y., and he married (2d), in that ])lace, prob- 
ably in 1795, Eanny, daughter of Elisha and Thankful ( Beebe) 
Bigelow, born in llie town of Colechester, New London County, 
Conn., on A])ril 7, 1777. He (lie(l in the town of llamiltc^n, 
Madison CotniU', X. V., on .\tigiisl 16, 1804, and liis widow 
married, in the town of llamilLon (later Eaton), on March 14, 
1805, Major vSamuel vSinclear, son of Colonel Richard and Polly 
(Cillev) vSinkler, born in Notlinghani, .\ow llam^ishire. New 
England, on Ma\' 10, 1762. His firsf wife, wliom he married al 
\"assalboro, Maine, on I*\'brtiar\- 8, 1785, was Sally IV'rkins, who 
died in llie town of Hamilton, Madison County, N. Y., on May 
14, 1804. Mr. Sinclair died in Sinelairxille, lown of Charlotte, 



5i8 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Chautauqua County, New York, on February 8, 1827, and his 
widow in the same place, on January 12, 1852. 
Children : 

777. Obed, born in the town of Richfield, Otsego County, N. Y., on September 

II, 1796. 

778. John Milton, born in the town of Hamilton, Madison Comity, N. Y., on 

July 30, iSoi. 

779. Fanny Aurora, born in the town of Hamilton, Madison County, N. Y., on 

October 27, 1803. 
It is said that Obed Edson 777 removed to Otsego County, N. Y.,in 1793. 

The following advertisement in TJie Otsego Herald or Western 
Advertiser, of Thursday, May 19, 1796 (the first number of which 
newspaper was issued at Cooperstown, N. Y., on April 3, 1795, 
by its editor and proprietor, Elisha Phinney), presents the fact 
of the employment there of Obed Edson 777 in the clothing 
business : 

" Notice is hereby given to all those who are or wish to be- 
come members of the Otsego Clothiers' Society, that they will 
meet at the house [inn] of Samuel Huntingdon, esq., in Coopers- 
town, on the second Thursday in June next, at nine of the clock 
in the morning ; to regulate their prices, and do such other busi- 
ness as shall be thought necessary. By order of the Society. 

"O. Edson, Clerk. 

"May 12, 1796." 

On August 21, 1798, " Obed Edson [777], of the town of Rich- 
field, county of Otsego, merchant," gave a mortgage unto George 
Fraligh and John Bartlett, of the town of German Flatts, in the 
county of Herkimer, New York, merchants, to secure the pay- 
ment of seven hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-four 
cents, on several pieces of land lying in the town of Richfield, in 
Schuyler's Patent. — Vide: Book of Mortgages, B. 129, in the 
office of the Clerk of Otsego County, Cooperstown, N. Y. 

It is said that Obed 395 bought on January 17, 1801, an acre 
of land, on the Chenango River, in the town of Hamilton, Madi- 
son County, N. Y., and erected there cloth-dressing works. 

His widow bore to her second husband, Major Samuel Sin- 
clair, the following children : 

i. Nancy Sinclair, bom in the town of Hamilton, Madison County, N. Y., on 
January 24, 1806. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 519 

ii. David Bigelow Sinclair, born in the town of Eaton, Madison County, N. Y., 

on March lo, 1807. 
iii. Joseph Sinclair, born in the town of Eaton, Madison County, N. Y., on 

March 15, iSog. 
iv. George Washington Sinclair, born in the town of I'onifrct, Chautauqua 

County, N. Y., on July 4, 1811. 
V. Orlinda Sinclair, born in the town of Gerry, Chautamiua County, N. Y., 

on May 10, 1S13. 
vi. Virtue Elvira Sinclair, born in the town of Gerry, Chautauqua County, 

N. Y., on February 3, 1S16. 
vii. Hiram Sinclair, born in the town of Gerry, Chatauqiia County, N. Y., on 
August 29, 181 7. 

Major Samuel Sinclair, an officer of the Revolutionary War, 
and later a resident of the town of Eaton, Madison County, N. Y., 
having, in November, iSog, purchased lot 41, in the town of 
Pomfret, Chautauqua County, N. Y., which embraced the site of 
Sinclairville, at the place where now the roads intersect at Sin- 
clairville, — the one running thence to Charlotte Center, the other 
to Cherry Creek, — partly erected a log house, miles away from 
any road and environed by woodland. In March, 18 10, Major 
Sinclair, William Berry and his family, John Sinclair with 
Chauncey Andrews, a hired man, arrived at the unfinished build- 
ing, the snow being deep and the weather cold. The members 
of the party "occupied for two days and nights a wigwam made 
of poles and hemlock boughs," until the men were able to com- 
plete the log house. In the fall of 1810, Major Sinclair "cut a 
w^agon road from Fredonia" to the site of his log dwelling, 
whither, on the twenty-second of October, 1810, his famil\-, in- 
cluding his two stepsons and stepdaughter, arri\-cd. During the 
preceding summer he had erected a grist-mill, and in the fall of 
1810 he built a frame dwelling which was for many years the 
village tavern, and in 181 1, a grist-mill. Such were the begin- 
nings of Sinclairville. 

397. Stephen Fiske, son of Obed 176 and Prudence (Fiske) 
Edson, born in the town of Lanesborough, P)crkshirc County, 
Mass., on July 9, 1776, married Abigail Smith. 

Children : 

78U. Ebcn D. 

781. Wyllys. 

782. Abigail. 

783. Olive. 

784. Lucy. 

785. Evuiice. 



520 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

786. Desiah [Desire?]. 

787. William. 

Olive 7 S3 married John S. Van Alstine. 

Stephen F. Edson 397, of Richfield, Otsego Count)^ N. Y., 
made his will on December 30, 1842, which was proved on De- 
cember 7, 1855. 

400. Wyllys, M.D., son of Obed 176 and Prudence (Fiske) 
Edson, born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, 
Mass., on April 22, 1783, married in New Lisbon, Otsego 
County, N. Y., on November 5, 1808, by the Rev. Daniel 
Nash, Sally, daughter of Elnathan Noble, bom about 1784^ at 
Unadilla. He died in Unadilla, Otsego County, N. Y., on August 
14, 1823, and she also there in the seventy-fifth year of her age, 
in the summer of 1858 or 1859. 

Children : 

788. Darwin Noble, born in New Lisbon, N. Y., on March 25, iSog. 

789. Adelia. 

790. Wyllys Fiske. 

791. Sally Maria. 

792. Curtis. 

793. William Bostwick, born in Unadilla, N. Y., on April 7, 1824. 

Adelia Edson 789 married Thomas Hayes, by whom she had a daughter 
Julia. Curtis Edson 792 died unmarried in California. 

Doctor Wyllys Edson 400 was elected, in 1807, a member of 
the Otsego County Medical Society, organized in Cooperstown, 
in that county, on July i, 1806. 

On March 6, 1806, Dr. Wyllys Edson, of the town of New 
Lisbon, Otsego County, N. Y., purchased fifty-two and a half 
acres of land of Oliver and Peter Canfield, for $950, lying in the 
town of New Lisbon, in Wells' tract, Crogkan's Patent, at the 
northeast corner of Elnathan Noble's lot, No. 28, Wells' tract. 

402. Lewis, son of Lewis 177 and Hepzibah (Washburn) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
province of Massachusetts Bay, on January 23, 1771, married 
(ist) Elizabeth Beebe. He married (2d), in 1799, Orilla Mead. 
He died in Bristol, in the town of Woodstock, Ulster County, N. 
Y., on May 23, 1845, and his remains were interred in the family 
burial ground, in Mink Hollow, in that town. 

Children by second wife : 

794. Virgil James, born in Danbviry, Conn., on January 9, 1800. 

795. Clarissa, born in New York, N. Y., in 1802. 

796. Milton Lewis, born in New York, N. Y., in 1805. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 521 

In 1795, Lewis Edson 402 was an inhabitant of Otsego 
County, New York, as is evidencctl l)y the followins: announce- 
ment made on Thursday, November ig, that year, in The Otsego 
Herald, published in Cooperstown : 

"Singing School. 

" Tlie Subscriber intends to o])en his Singing School on Ahjn- 
day next; — The subscribers, and others who wish to become 
subscribers, are requested to meet at the Court-House at 6 
o'clock, P.M. L. Edson, Jun. 

" N. B. Gamuts to be sold, by the dozen or single, with or 
without blanks." 

In the issue of the same newspaper, on Tliursday, February 
25, 1796, the following advertisement appeared: 

"Masonic Information. The Members of the Ancient and 
Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons, in this 
County, are respectfully notified that Otsego Lodge wiH be 
opened on Tuesday next [March i], at the house of Joseph (jrifTin, 
Innkeeper, in Cooperstown, [at] 3 o'clock P.M.. at which time 
and place all concerned are requested to attend." 

At this first meeting of Otsego Lodge, Xo. 40, organized under 
a warrant of the Cxrand Lodge of the State of New "^^ork, given on 
August 14, I 795, the following officers are recorded as present: 
Eliim Phinnev, W. M. ; Rowland Cotton, S. W. ; James Fitch, 
J. W. ; Benjamin Gilbert, Treasurer; Richard !'>dwards. S. I).; 
Lewis Edson, J. I).; Stephen Ingalls, S. S. ; Levi Collar, J. S. ; 
and Ezra Eaton, Tyler. 

In TJic Otsego Hcnihl, of 'I'lmrsdax-, Ahirch 24. 1 7()(), under the 
headdinc of "Lewis Edson. jun.." the following notice was in- 
serted : 

"Having engaged to ride as a Post, for twelve months, and 
as his character is such as wih cntilk- liini to the confidence of all 
who ma\' ha\'e occasion for his services, the I'rinter lu~)pes he will 
remove the disagreeable in-i])ression whic-h the knavery t)f some 
and the fickleness of others ha\e left on the minds of the citizens. 
The inhabitants on his route may rest as.sured that neither 
abilitv nor fidelitN- will be wanting on the part of .Mr. 1-Mson. — 



522 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Nothing is now lacking but a general subscription to secure a 
good faithful Post, who will make weekly the circuit of the 
county, the advantages of which are so obvious that the most 
liberal encouragement will be expected, by the Printer." 

The town of Middlefield, Otsego County, having been set off 
from the town of Cherry Valley, in that county, on March 3, 
1797, the first town -meeting there was held on April 4, that year, 
at which Lewis Ed son was chosen one of the three commissioners 
of schools then elected by the town. 

It would seem that he intended removing from Otsego County 
by his offering for sale the following property, in The Otsego 
Herald oiThxwsdsiy, January 18, 1798: 

"A Bargain. A Farm for sale, within two and a half miles 
of Cooperstown, on the main Post road from thence to Cherry 
Valley; said farm contains ninety acres of land, twenty of which 
are under good improvement. . . . There is a very con- 
venient Log House with two rooms. . . . For particulars 
enquire of the subscriber, living on the premises. 

"Lewis Edson. 

"Middlefield, Jan. 15, 1798." 

From 1 80 1 to 181 2 his name and profession as a teacher are 
given in the directories of the city of New York, and from 1 8 1 3 to 
181 5 he is named in them as a nail manufacturer. 

It is said that he was the clerk of Christ Protestant Episcopal 
Church, in Ann Street, New York, for several years from 1806. 
It is also said that he built five houses in New York Citv, and 
that he traded one of them for the farm and homestead of his 
father in Mink Hollow, town of Woodstock, Ulster County, N. Y., 
where he lived for a number of 3^ears, and later, probably in 1830, 
moved to the village of Bristol, now known as Shady, in that town. 
He was a vestryman of Christ Lutheran Church, in the village of 
Woodstock, in the town of Woodstock, having been elected to 
that office in 1811. 

405. William Jarvis, son of Thomas 179 and Mary (Jarvis) 
Edson, bom in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, 
Mass., on February 23, 1786, married at Fly Creek, in the town 
of Otsego, Otsego County, N. Y., by the Rev. Daniel Nash, on 
March 26, 1809, Mary (Polly), daughter of Abijah and Sarah 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 523 

(Howell) Fairchikl ' born in Sugar Loaf Willcv, in tlie town of 
Warwick, Orange County, N. Y., on March 1 1, 1788. He died in 
Utica, Oneida County, N. Y., at 88 Fayette Street, on Sunday 
morning, October i, 1848, and she in New York City, on Decem- 
ber 24, 1873. 
Children : 

797. Tracy Robinson, born at Fly Creek, Otsego County, N. Y., on December 

12, 1809. 

798. Clement Massillon, bom at Exeter, Otsego County, N. Y., on August 14, 

iSii. 

799. Marmont Bryan, born at Fly Creek, Otsego County, N. Y., on April 12, 
^813. 

' FAMILY OF FAIRCIIILD. 

^ Abijah Faircliild, son of David and Catharine (Gregory) Fairchild, born in 
Morristown, Morris County, N. J., on September 2, 1758, married there, on 
October 7, 1779, Sarah, daughter of Silas Howell, born October 8, 1759. He 
died in Cooperstown, Otsego County, N. Y., on January, 1851. 

Children: 

William, born in Morristown July 24, 1780. 

Catharine, born in Morristown March 6, 1782. 

Gabriel, born in Morristown May 21, 1784. 

John Flavel, born in Morristown May 18, 1786. 

r* u n 1 o P- i 

,, ,.' ,, ,,, ,- born in Sugar Loaf Valley, N. Y., March 11, 17SS. 

Mary ('Polly ) ) "= j < > > / 

David, born in Sugar Loaf Valley, N. Y., August i, 1791. 

Nance ("Nancy"), born in Sugar Loaf Valley, N. Y., March 7, 1794. 

Phoebe, born in Sugar Loaf Valley, N. Y., April 4, 1798. 

Mary Fairchild, mentioned above, married William Jarvis Edson 405, on 
March 26, 1809. 

Abijah Fairchild enlisted, as a private, on April 30, 1777, in Captain Samuel 
Sanford's company, in Colonel John Chandler's battalion in the Eighth Con- 
necticut Regiment. He also served as a private in Captain Ezekiel Hull's 
company of Light Dragoons in Major Skinner's Eighth Connecticut Reginient. 
Tie had previously served as a private, for fifteen months, in Captain Silas 
Howell's company, in Colonel Sterling's regiment of New Jersey troops. 

William Fairchild, on Jtme 6, 181 2, was, with William C. JarvHs and Josiah 
Ste])hens, a jn-oprietor of Fairchild's Mills, on Oaks Creek, in town of Otsego, 

Otsego County, N. Y. Catharine Fairchild married Jones. John Flavel 

Fairchild niarried Flavia Merrill. He continued the jniblication of The Rcpuhli- 
can Monitor, begun at Cazenovia, N. Y., in Septeml)er, 1823, by L. L. Rice, 
at that place, from A])ril. 1825, to January, 1832; from that time t«> jul\'. 1840, 
it was continvied by John F. Fairchild & Son; and thereafter, until March 4, 
1 841, by John F. Fairchild, when its publication was discontinued. He died 
in Cooperstown, N. Y., on January 5, 1864, and his widow, that year, at Caze- 
novia, N. Y. Children: i. Sidney Thompson, born at Norwich, N. Y., on 
November 15, 1808, graduated from Union College. Sehneetady. N. Y., about 
1830, followed the profession of a lawyer, was for a time presitlent of the Board 
of Trustees of the Village of Cazenovia, N. Y., married on August 20, 1834, 



524 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

800. Mary Augusta, born at Oxford, Chenango County, N. Y., on February i, 

1819. 

801. Susan Maria, born at Oneonta, Otsego County, N. Y., April 9, 1826. 

All the children were baptized by the Rev. Daniel Nash, of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. 

Tracy R. 797 died in New York City November 29, 1881. (See historical 
part.) Mary 800 died May 27, 1890, unmarried. Susan 801 died June 30, 
1885, tmmarried. 

406. Asahel, son of Thomas 179 and Mary (Jarvis) Edson, 
born in the town of Lanesborough. Berkshire County, Mass., on 
August 7, 1788, married Fanny Stetson, bom on June 17, 1788. 
He died in Belvidere, Ilhnois. He was a zealous Episcopahan, 
and was a gifted vocaHst. 

The following letter was written by him to his sister-in-law, 
Mrs. William Jarvis Edson, wdien he was postmaster in York, 
Michigan : 

" York, Wash. Co., Mich., March i6th, '63. 

" Dear 'Sister,' 

" Yours of the 13th rec'd last evening. We are thankful that 
there is one left that can call us Brother and Sister — thankful for 
vour kind remembrance and for the money sent — hope to be 
able (as we now are) to earn a living without being burdensome 
to our friends — the generosity of yourself and family will be 
gratefully remembered. We are yet well, excepting Fanny's 
lame arm, which is much better since the coldest weather of the 
winter. The Ypsilanti friends are well. Fanny was 74 years 
old on the 17th of June last; Asahel 74 years, 7th of August, 



Helen Childs. He died at Cazenovia, Madison County, N. Y., on February 15, 
1889. 2. Lewison, who married Clara L. Dow. 3. Miranda. 4. John. 

Evmicc Fairchild married William Angel. 

David Fairchild married, and on July 20, 1810, was received as a member 
of Presbyterian Church, at Coopcrstown, N. Y., and removed in 1826 to Milton. 
He died in California in 1866. His daughter, Mrs. Caroline (Fairchild) Ford, 
wife of DeWitt Ford, resides in Oneonta, N. Y. 

Nancy Fairchild married Graves. 

Phftbe Fairchild married Stephen Gregory. She on July 20, 1810, was ad- 
mitted a member of the Presbyterian Church at Coopcrstown, N. Y. 

Charles Stebbins, son of Sidney Thompson and Helen (Childs'i Fairchild, 
born in Cazenovia, N. Y., on April 30, 1842, was graduated, in 1863, from 
Harvard College; was assistant attorney-general of the State of New York in 
1874-76; attorney-general of the State of New York in 1876-78; assistant 
secretary of the United States Treasury in 1 88 5-8 7; secretary of the United 
States Treasury, April i, 1887; married, on June i, 187 1, Helen, daughter of 
Ledyard and Helen Clarissa (Seymour) Lincklaen. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



525 



1862. Your arri\-al here as a visitor would cliccr us much. A 
visit from any or ah the family would be jo)-fullv accepted — -the 
freedom of all the sa]:)-ljushes woidd be tendered _\'ou by an over- 
whelming majority of the voters in York. Glad to hear that 
Mary has gone into the church. 
We can remember the time 
when no other than that, or- 
ganized under the supervision 
of the Apostles, was called a 
church; to mix with other de- 
nominations was going t o 
meeting. Had Christ's re- 
C[uirement, to be ' one even as 
he was one with the Father,' 
been faithfullv observed by 
professing Christians, and St. 
Paul's injunction been heeded, 
when he said, ' Now I beseech 
you, brethren, mark them 
which cause divisions, con- 
trary to the doctrine which vc 
have learned, and avoid them,' 
we should ha\'e but one church 
in this 19th century — and the 
necessity of a valid ministry 
universally acknowledged . 
God grant the fulfillment of 
the Scripture prophecy may 

soon take place, ^^'hen they shall ' return and become one fold 
under one Shepherd.' Then, and not until then, will the 'na- 
tions learn war no more' Sorry to hear of Susan's illness. 
Glad to hear of her anxiety to serve God acce]italjly. The Ser- 
mon, 1 think, excellent. It only reiterates, (in a better form,) 
what I have tried to promulgate during the last two years, but 
even my Scripture (|uotations in support of the position are 
somietimes met with: 'Well. 1 don'l belie\e the Almighty has 
anything to do with this war.' ( )ur chastisement cann(~)t reason- 
ably be expected to cease while our rebellion against the laws of 
God is so fearfully ]jredominant in this nation. 




ASAHEL EDSON AND WIFE FANNY. 



526 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

"We have Post. Office business, which together with small 
dealing in patent medicines, and a few trinkets, is sufficient to 
furnish us with the necessaries of life. We may retain the Post 
Office unless the 'Copperheads' succeed in dethroning President 
Lincoln. 

" If I could think as fast as you, I might weary you with long 
letters. Respects and love to you and all the family. God bless 
and guide us all in the path of duty through life. 

"A. & Fanny Edson. 

" Do you know where Ann R is? We pity her, but can- 
not see any way to aid her." 

408. Oramel, son of Thomas 179 and Mary (Jarvis) Edson, 
born in the town of Lanesborough, Berkshire County, Mass., on 
September 9, 1792, married, in Portlandville, town of Milford, 
Otsego County, N. Y.,Mrs. Lydia Wells. He died in Portland- 
ville. 

Child: 

802. Mary C, born in Portlandville. 

411. Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas 179 and Mary (Jarvis) 
Edson, born on September 15, 1801, married Joseph Rice. She 
died in Cooperstown, Otsego County, N. Y., in 1848. 

Children : 

803. Joseph Marcus Rice. 

804. Ann Maria Rice. 

412. Hannah Allen, daughter of Benjamin 186 and Deborah 
(Perkins) Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth 
County, Mass., on February 26, 1784, married there on May 11, 
181 2, Increase, son of Dyer and Abigail (Stetson) Robinson, bom 
on December 25, 1789. She died on November 30, 1849, and he 
on July 17, 1869. Their remains are interred in Trinity Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church graveyard. 

Child : 

805. Thomas Perkins Robinson died June 7, 1822, aged six years, of hydro- 

phobia. 

413. John, son of Benjamin 186 and Deborah (Perkins) Ed- 
son, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., 
on March 25, 1786, married, in 1825, Mary Bass, born in Quincy, 
Norfolk Coimty, Mass., on September 20, 1804. He died in 
Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on October 23, 1865, and 
she in Lowell, Mass., on September 20, 1885. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 527 

Children : 

S06. John, born in Bridgewatcr, Mass., on June 27, ICS27. 

807. Mary, Ixirn in Bridgewater, Mass., on January 21, 1829. 

SOS. Mark, bom in Bridgewater, Mass., on February 22, 1830. 

809. Samuel, bom in Bridgewater, Mass., on March 28, 1835. 

810. Benjamin, bom in Bridgewater, Mass., on January 18, 1837. 

811. Theodore, bom in Bridgewater, Mass., on March 23, 1839. 

812. Josiah, born in Bridgewater, Mass., on September 17, 18.41. 

813. WiUiam Perkins, bom in Bridgewater, Mass., on April 11, 1845. 

John 806 was graduated from Harvard University in 1848, studied civil 
engineering, was an architect in New York City from 1851 until his death cm 
April 29, 1857. Mark S08 married in Portland, Me., on April 25, 186-, Emma 
J. Leavitt. He died in New York City on October 2, 1893. Benjamin 810 is 
librarian of the Supreme Court of California, in San Francisco. William Perkins 
Si 3 resides in the West. 

John Edson 413, the father, while serving his apprenticeship 
with a millwright, was privileged the use of a candle at night, 
and being inclined at the close of each day's work to withdraw 
himself from his associates, he commonly spent the hours before 
bedtime in reading and studying, and as a consequence gained 
a knowledge of many things that were of great advantage to him 
practically and mentally, so that at the end of his term of ser- 
vice as an apprentice he was better educated than many other 
young men of his age, who had more time and means for ac- 
quiring an education. As a millwright his rei)utation gained 
for him a wide field of employment, and for a number of years he 
was occupied in superintending the construction of mills in the 
Middle and Southern States, as well as in New England, and in 
fitting them with tlie most impr()\-ed machinery of the period. 
His extensive reading obtained for liim an actjuaintance with the 
works of the most distinguished English writers, and his theologi- 
cal knowledge was, it is said, equal tn that of many clergymen of 
his day. His younger brothers were assisted financially by him, 
and he made his ])arents comfortably enjoy tlicir old age. He 
was a popular and ])romincnt member of tlie order of Freemasons. 
He was made a Master Mason on January 25, 1810, and was 
elected Worshipful Master of InJlowshi]) Lodge, Bridgewater, in 
1812. "Having manifested his skill and cxccIIimu'V in the throe 
first degrees of Masonry, he was advanced to the degrees of 
Master, Past Master, Most Excellrnt Master, and afterward to 
the sublime degree of Royal Arch .Mason in St. .Xndrow's Roval 
Arch Chapter, holden at Boston, on April 25. 18 -," and he 



528 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



became District Deputy Grand Master on December 27, 1855. 
One of the masonic jewels given him is inscribed " Mt. Zion R. A. 
Chapt. to John Edson, past high priest." He was a High 
Churchman, and when the "Oxford Movement," which began in 
England, reached the American Church, it had his hearty sym- 
pathy and co-operation. The Church was his home, and he 
zealously labored for its growth and bestowed upon its work his 
warmest affection. His standing among Protestant Episcopal 
laymen was as high as that of his brother Theodore among the 
clergy, and he was a member of the Diocesan Convention until 
the end of his life. He had, as had his brother Theodore, a 
cheerful disposition and a keen sense of humor; and while re- 
ligion was the mainspring of their lives, they were never gloomy 
nor austere. A picture of his residence is gi\'en below. 




HOMESTEAD OF JOHN EDSON IN BRIDQEWATER, MASS. 



416. Theodore, Rev. Dr., son of Benjamin 186 and Deborah 
(Perkins) Edson, born in the town of Bridge water, Plymouth 
County, Mass., on August 24, 1793, married in Boston, on No- 
vember 29, 1824, Rebecca Jane, daughter of the Right Rev. 
Samuel Parker, D.D., the second Protestant Episcopal bishop of 
the diocese of Massachusetts, and Anne Cutler, his wife, born in 
Boston, on April 19, 1790. She died in Loweh, Mass., on August 
10, 1876, and he also on June 25, 1883. 

Child : 

814. Elizabeth Mason, born in Lowell, Mass., on June 23, 1S26. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



529 



Theodore Edson 416 was an ardent reader of books on re- 
ligious subjects while he was a boy. He entered Phillips Acad- 
emy, at Andover, Mass., in t8t6, and Harvard College in 1818, 




REV. DR. THEODORE EDSON, 1793-1883. 



and was graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1822. An entry in his 
journal, in September, 181 8, shows that lie was chosen Superin- 
tendent of tlie Sabbath School ol' CMirist Church, Boston, but 
that he dechned the office because Ins time was otherwise fully 
occupied. He served as la\' reader in St. Matthew's Church, 
South Boston, from 181 9, and for a year after his graduation. As 



34 



53° 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



there was no Episcopal seminary at that time, he pursued theo- 
logical studies with Rev. Dr. John Farmer Jarvis, rector of St. 
Paul's Church, Boston. He was admitted to Deacon's orders, 
on September ii, 1823. 

The founders of the cotton-cloth mills known as the "Wal- 
tham System " established a mill at Pawtucket Falls, in 1823, 
and they invited Mr. Edson to take pastoral care of the opera- 
tives, and he gladly accepted, and entered upon the work, on 
March 6, 1824, at East Chelmsford. He had charge also of the 
company's day school. His labors here resulted in the con- 
struction of a stone building, of which the comer-stone was laid 
May 20, 1824, and it was consecrated as St. Anne's Church, March 
15, 1825, at which time Mr. Edson was ordained to the priest- 
hood. 

The village of East Chelmsford was renamed, March i, 1826, 
and was called Lowell, and the private school then became a 
public school, and Mr. Edson passed from the superintendence 
into the School Board, and served as a member for many years. 
The establishment of the North and South Grammar schools, 
now the Bartlett and Edson schools, is credited to his earnest 
efforts. 

In 1826, the Merrimack 
Manufacturing Company 
provided a residence for Dr. 
Edson as rector of St. 
Anne's Church. In 1827, 
the management of the 
church property and affairs 
was turned over to the 
church officers. A Sunday- 
School building was erected, 
and the school grew from 
two hundred members to 
six hundred and fifty-one. 
A colony from this church, on August 24, 1841, organized the 
mission church of St. Luke's. 

St. Anne's Church purchased its site and building on No- 
vember 23, 1843. It had previously been leasehold property. 
Dr. Edson, on October 26, 1850, purchased a cottage, over- 




"ST.vfCNNE-s Church. 
LOWELL, MASS. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 531 

looking the Merrimack River, and denominated it "The Manse." 
In 1855, the debt upcm the church property was extinguished. 
In 1865, a rectory was purchased for seventeen thousand dollars; 
and a chapel was built and furnished, in 1868, at a cost of twelve 
thousand dohars. Dr. Edson, in 1875, established a home for 
destitute children, at his own expense, which was incorporated, 
on April 20, 1876, as the "St. Mary's Orphanage." 

The conspicuous stone edifice, now known as .Vll Saints 
Church, in the village of Chelmsford, southwest of Lowell, grew 
out of Dr. Edson's Christian enterprise. He had preached to a 
small congregation, on July 15, i860, and he made frequent visits 
to them thereafter, and the church of St. Anne's in Chelmsford 
was consecrated on December 20, 1882, and its name was changed 
to All Saints in 1888. 

A prominent row of buildings in Lowell was named the 
Edson Block," and the burial-ground was called the "Edson 
Cemetery." 

Hobart College, in Geneva, N. Y., conferred upon Mr. Edson, 
in 1847, the degree of S.T.D. Just before his decease, he was 
m^ade Dean of the Eastern Diocese of Massachusetts. 

He was considered indispensable at anniversary celebrations 
and public meetings, and at the installation of municipal officers 
he was, for a long period, called upon to invoke Divine favor 
and direction. He was President of tlie Lowell Institution of 
Savings, from its incorporation in 1829. 

He wrote an expository work, entitled Scripture Proofs of 
the Church Catechism, which was published in 1849; ^^^so a 
Memoir of ]]\irren Colbiirn, the mathematician. 

He was one of the (eldest members of the order of Ancient 
Free and Accepted Masons in the city of Lowell, having cni 
July 13, 1826, taken the first degree, in Pentucket Lodge. In 
the following year he was received into Mount Horeb Royal Arcli 
Chapter, and on February 20, 1828, he look orders in Templar 
Masonry in the Boston Commandery. He t(^ok tliirty-two 
degrees in the Scottish Rite. He was a cliarter menibcM- o\' Kil- 
winning Lodge of A. F. and A. !\hisons, Mount ilorcb Royal Arch 
Chapter, and of Pilgrim Commandery. He was for many years 
a member of the Old Residents' Historical Association of 
Lowell. 



532 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Enfeebled by a month's illness, the Rev. Theodore Edson, 
S.T.D., died in the rectory of St. Anne's Church, at ten min- 
utes of nine o'clock, on Monday morning, June 25, 1883, aged 
eighty-nine years and ten months. While the body of the 
deceased clergyman lay in state in the church, not less than four 
thousand peo])le came there to take a last look at the face of the 
beloved rector. The fimeral services at the church, on Thursday 
afternoon, at two o'clock, drew to the edifice a large concourse of 
men, women, and children, who not only occupied all the avail- 
able seats and standing room in the building, but stood in throngs 
about its doors and on the sidewalks leading to them. There 
was no sermon nor any addresses on the occasion. The vested 
clergy, who participated in the solemn exercises, were forty-two 
in number, embracing the Right Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, 
D.D., the fourth bishop of the diocese of Massachusetts. Seated 
with the family, unvested, were the Rev. Samuel Edson, the Rev. 
Stevens Parker, D.D., the Rev. William Lawrence, and the Rev. 
John Richmond. 

"The Rev. Doctor Edson," as remarked by the writer of an 
obituary of four and a half columns in one of the daily journals 
of the city of Lowell, " had been a conscientious Christian leader 
from his 3^outh ; had always been a zealous guardian of the poor 
and afflicted; had sacrificed self when opportunity presented 
itself to promulgate the Gospel and do the will of his Master. He 
never murmured when adversity came, nor exhibited a spirit of 
haughtiness in times of prosperity. His whole object seemed to 
be to watch carefully over the lambs of his fold, and if success 
attended his efforts God received the praise. The Rev. Doctor 
Edson always observed a strict deportment of life. His habits 
were regular; his hours of devotion and study were thoroughly 
systematized, and in consequence of this, and notwithstanding 
the fact that he was frail in general appearance, he lived until he 
became like the sheaf which is fully ripened for the gamer. . . . 
Volumes might be written of this good man, but the pen of the 
most eloquent writer could not do justice to him; and only his 
works, which follow him, can stand as an everlasting monument 
to his name and noble philanthropic deeds." 

" His strong point," said another writer, "was his unwavering 
faithfulness as a parish priest. His distinguishing trait as a 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 533 

clergyman was a remarkable insight into the religious life, which 
made him a true spiritual teacher. Few clergymen have ever 
lived more truly for their people. Down to his last sickness, 
this aged man was to be found constantly among the sick and 
needy members of his flock, ministering to their wants as a true 
shepherd. He was the patriarch of the Lowell clergy, and en- 
joyed the respect and reverence of all who knew him. He had 
saintliness of character. His life was a visible walk with God. 
He was a devoted and consistent churchman. . . . He had 
the courage of his convictions; was absolutely fearless in the 
discharge of his duty; and, while a man of strong will, no one 
could excel him in unselfish li\-ing, in tenderness of heart, in 
devotion to duty, in those great but simple virtues which dis- 
tinguish the Christian gentleman." 

420. Charles P., son of Nehemiah 187 and Olive (Perkins) 
Edson, bom in Vermont, on January 2, 1809, married, on ]\Iay 
15, 1828, Amy Caroline, daughter of George W. and Hannah 

Fox, bom in , N. Y., on April 28, 1807. He died in Van 

Wert, Ohio, on February 22, 1885, in the 77th year of his age, 
and she also there on April 17, 1894, in the 87th year of her age. 
Their remains were interred in Woodland Cemetery, in Van 
Wert, Ohio. 

Children : 

815. George F , born in Brimfield, Portage County, O.. on July 28, 

1S29. 

816. Emily Marcella, boi-n in Brimfield, Portage County, O., on June 4, 

^834. 

817. Charles Waterman, born in Brimfield, Portage County, O., on Ajiril 28, 

1836. 
Emily Marcella Edson S16 married in \'an Wert, O., on May 12, 185S, 
Simeon B. Conn. She died there on June 7, 1859, in the twenty-fifth year of 
her age, and her body was bviried in Woodland Cemetery. Charles Waterman 
817 died also there on October 28, 1854, and his remains were also buried in 
Woodland Cemetery. 

Charles P. l-^dson 476 was in 1849 ^ niember of the legislature 
of Ohio, when that bodv elected the Hon. Salmon P. (^liase, United 
States Senator. He was for a time the prosecuting attorney of 
Van Wert County, and was one of tlie nldesl lawyers in that 
section of Ohio. 

428. Zidon, son of Ezra 189 and Asenath (Perkins) Ed- 
son, born in the town of Tomlinsnn, Windham CounlN". Vt., on 



534 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

November ii, 1785, married . He died in Aurora, 111., 

on April 6, 1870. 
Children : 

818. Galen. 

819. Lavina. 

820. Cyrus. 

821. Asenath. 

822. Melinda. 

823. Alfred. 

824. Ezra. 

Galen 818 died on Atigust 29, 181 3; Lavina 81 g married Allen, and 

lived at Amosa, 111.; Cynis 820 died on April 25, 1821 ; Asenath 821, on June 
23, 1821 ; Melinda 822, on December 22, 1821 ; Alfred 823, on October 18, 1890, 
and was buried in Aurora, 111. ; and Ezra 824 on April 14, 1884, and was buried 
in Manchester, Vt. 

Zidon Edson 428 was one of the early settlers of Parkers- 
town, Rutland County, Yt., which obtained that name on No- 
vember 7, 1804. That designation was chan<^ed on November 
6, 1827, to Mend on. In 1810, he built the first saw^mill in the 
town, which was swept away by a freshet in July, 181 1. That 
year he became a freeman, and served as town-clerk. He was 
elected in 1813 a member of the House of Representatives of 
Vermont. In 1814, he was a delegate to the Vermont Con- 
stitutional Convention. In 1822, '25, and '26, he represented the 
town of Shrewsbury in the General Assembly of Vermont. He 
was one of the building committee of the Rutland Baptist Church, 
organized on February 27, 1827. His dwelling was on the road 
from Rutland to Woodstock. He removed to the West in 1850. 
Later, he resided in Aurora, 111. 

430. Ophir, son of Ezra 189 and Asenath (Perkins) Edson, 
bom in the town of Tomlinson, Windham Co., Vt., on x\pril 21, 
1790, married (ist), in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., in Sep- 
tember, 181 2, Clarissa Shurtliff. She died and her remains were 
buried in Chester in 1814. He married (2d), in the town of 
Chester, on December 24, 1816, Soviah, daughter of Othniel and 
Dorcas (Field) Williams, bom in Chester on April 9, 1792. She 
died there on April 19, 1875, and he also, on February 25, 1879. 
They were buried in Chester Cemetery. 

Child by first wife : 

825. Clarissa, born in Chester, Vt., on August ii, 1813. 

Children by second wife : 

826. Othniel Williams, born in Chester, Vt., on January 7, 1818. 



EDSONS IN ENCxLAND AND AMERICA 535 

827. Albert Henry, born in Chester, \'t., on March ii, 1819. 

S2S. Cyms, bom in Chester, Vt., on October 14, 1820. 

829. Ezra Franklin, born in Chester, Vt., on November 21, 1825. 

830. Alexander, born in Chester, Vt., on July 31, 1S27. 

831. Melinda Dorcas, born in Chester, Vt., on April 10, 1829. 

832. Franklin, bom in Chester, Vt., on April 5, 1832. 

833. Althine Soviah, bom in Chester, Vt., on Atigust 14, 1834. 

834. Abigail, bom in Rockingham, Windham County, Vt., on November 23, 

1836. 
Albert Henry 827 died in Rockingham, \Vin<lham County, Vt., on May 7, 
1838, unmarried; Ezra Franklin 829 died on JtUy 4, 1827; Althine Soviah 833 
died unmarried. 

449. Ezra, son of Libeus 193 and Joanna (Keen) Edson, bom 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., in 1795, 
married there, on April 3, 1819, Eliza Wentworth. He died in 
the town of Bridgewater, on October 4, 1828, aged thirty-three 
years. 

Child: 

835. Joanna, born in March, 1820. 

Joanna 835 died April 26, 1821, aged thirteen months. 

456. C3^rus, son of Cyrus 196 and Hannah (Hudson) Edson, 
bom in the town of Minot, Me., on May 26, 1805, married (ist), 
in Stockbridge, Vt., on November 22, 1831, Sibyl Wilcox, born 
in Royalton, Vt., on May 3, 1804, daughter of Amos and Sarah 
(Rogers) Wilcox. She died, in Mendon, Rutland County, Vt., 
^larch 14, 1845. He married (2d), in Wallingford, Vt., on June 
I, 1845, Abigail W^. French, bom in \\'allingford, on September 
10, 1810, and died there, May 17, 1871. He died in Bennington, 
Vt., on October 2, 1892. 

Children by first wife : 

835 A. Melvin, born in Mendon on June 21, 1833. 

835 B. Sarah, bom in Mendon on May 21, 1835. 

835 c. Amos Wilcox, Ijorn in Mendon on September 25, 183S. 

835 D. Albert Williams, liorn in Mendon on June 19, 1S44. 

Children by second wife : 

835 E. Siliyl, l)orn in Mendon on December 3, 1846. 
835 F. Isaac Galen, born in Mendon on June 3, 1848. 
835 G. Louisa, born in Mendon on May 29, 185 1. 
835 II. Emma, born in Mendon on May 29. 1852. 
835 I. Ira Otis, bf)rn in Mendon on Feliruary i 1 , 1856. 

Melvin married, in Rutland, Helen Harris. Sarah married, in Mendon, on 
January 14, 1862, Edward Norton. Amos married, in St. Albans, Vt., Esther 
Jaques. He died in Creston, la., August 15, i8q8. Albert married, in Norfolk. 
Va.. Caroline Vaughan. He (Hed in Rntlaml, August 17, 1898. 

Sibyl died June 11, 1847; Isaac died March 3, 1851; Louisa died October 
9, 1 851; Emma died May 28, 1853. 



536 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

460. Ezra, son of Cyrus 196 and Hannah (Hudson) Edson, 
born in Turner, Me., on January 12, 1813, married, in the town 
of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., AngeHna Washburn. 

Children : 

836. Lvicien, born in the town of Bridgewater, Mass., on May 15, 1840. 

837. Lucien Otis, bom in the town of Mendon, Rutland County, Vt. 

838. Hannah Whitman, born in the town of Mendon, Rutland County, Vt., 

on July 26, 1845. 

839. Mary Jane, born in the town of Mendon, Rutland County, Vt. 
Lucien 836, the first son, died on June i, 1842. 

Ezra Edson 460, when four years old, came with the other 
members of his father's family to the town of Shrewsbury, Rut- 
land County, Vt., from Turner, Me. In the early part of his life 
he became a member of the Rutland Baptist Church, with which 
he was connected until his death. In 1838 he went to learn the 
trade of a blacksmith with the i\mes Company, in West Bridge- 
water, and while there was captain of a militia company. 

461. Galen Kingman, M.D., son of Cyrus 196 and Hannah 
(Hudson) Edson, born in Turner, Me., on June 13, 1815, married, 
in Rutland, Rutland County, Vt., on October 9, 1837, Lucy, 
daughter of Daniel Hudson, born in Bridgewater, Plymouth 
County, Mass., on October 23, 1814. vShe died in Le Roy, 
Genesee County, N. Y., on May 31, 1866. 

Children: 

840. Charles Edwin, born in Rutland, Vt., on September 6, 1839. 

841. Galen Remain, bom in Le Roy, N. Y., on July 16, 1845. 

842. Hadley Judson, bom in Le Roy, N. Y., on January 14, 1851. 

843. Lucy Matella, born in Le Roy, N. Y., on July 15, 1S57. 

Galen Kingman Edson 461 settled in Le Roy, town of Le Roy, 
Genesee County, N. Y., in 1842, where he practised medicine 
until 1878. 

462. Otis Htidson, son of Cyrus 196 and Rebecca (Johnson) 
Edson, boni in Shrewsbury, Vt., on August 3, 1818, married 
Anne Berry. Whether there was more than one child has not 
been ascertained. 

Child: 

844. Alondo B., bom in Whitehall, N. Y., December 31, 1844. 

474. Mary, daughter of John 202 and Judith (Shaw) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on May 24, 1772, married 
there, on October 7, 181 7, John Bisbee. He had married (ist). 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 537 

Rebecca, daughter of Josiah Keith and widow of Isaac Aldcn ; and 
(2d), Huldah, daughter of Ebenezer Shaw. He died in 181 7, 
and Mary, his widow, in 1833. There were several children; 
two have been identified. 
Children of Mary: 

845. Ziba Bisbee. 

846. Chandler Bisbee. 

480. Jacob, son of John 202 and Judith (Shaw) Edson, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on November 2, 1786, mar- 
ried (ist), Lee, and (2d), in Milford, Otsego County, N. Y., by 

the Rev. Benjamin G. Paddock, Sophronia Bowen, of that place. 

Jacob Edson 480 was the clerk of the town of Milford, Otsego 
County, N. Y., in 181 2 and 1815. He subsequently removed to 
Harpersville, in Broome County, N. Y. 

481. Nehemiah Shaw, son of John 202 and Judith (Shaw) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 

Mass., on January q, 1789, married there Pamel , bom on 

September 11, 1798. 

Children : 

847. John, born on January 22, i Si 2. 

848. Lydia, born on August 27, 181 5. 

849. EUjah, born on July 5, 181 7. 

850. Barzillai, born on August 20, 181 8. 

851. Ruel, born on January 15, 1822. 

852. Lucy, born on September 15, 1825. 

853. Joseph, born on April 10, 1827. 

854. Damon, born on August 20, 1829. 

Lydia 848 married Seth Rowland, and Lucy 852, Elias Balcome, prior 

to the making of the will. Damon S54 married Arcssa M. and had three 

children. 

On January 26, 1857, Ncheniiali Sliaw l-^dson 481 of tlie town 
of Milford, Otsego County, N. V., niatlc his will, whicli was 
probated on OctoV)er 29, t86i. 

482. Joseph, son of John 202 and Judith (Shaw) Edson, 
born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth Count}-. .A hiss., on 

December 23, 1792, married Cynthia . He died in the town 

of Milford, Otsego County, N. V., in 1823. 

Children : 

855. Joseph L. 

856. Emily. 

857. S\'lvia. 

Joseph Edson, 482, of Milford, Otsego County, X. \'., made his 



538 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

will on October 22, 1822, which was proved at Cooperstown, 
Otsego County, N. Y., on February 4, 1823. The three children 
were then under age. 

484. Hannah, daughter of David 210 and Lydia (Shaw) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on November 27, 1783, married there on November 29, 
1804, John, son of John Smith, of Canton, Norfolk County, 
Mass. 

Children ; 

858. Albert Smith. 

859. Harrison Smith. 

860. Salome Smith. 

861. Rachel Smith. 

They lived in North Bridgewater. 

486. David, son of David 210 and Lydia (Bassett) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth Coi4nty, Mass., on 
January 27, 1789, married (ist), on April 26, 1827, Clintha Syl- 
vester. She died, and he married (2d) Mehetabel Fullerton of 
Abington. 

Child : 

862. Emily. She married, April 6, 1859, Edward E. Bennett. 

487. Sarah, daughter of David 210 and Lydia (Bassett) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on June 28, 1791, married there, on June 18, 1816, John, 
son of John Burrell. She died in 1865. 

Children : 

863. Nicholas Burrell, born in North Bridgewater, Mass., on May 23, 181 7. 

864. Henry Burrell, born in North Bridgewater, Mass., on May 29, 181 9. 

865. Sarah Burrell, born in North Bridgewater, Mass., on April 12, 1823. 

489. Mehetabel, daughter of David 210 and Lydia (Bassett) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on August 26, 1795, married, on February 5, 1823, Ne- 
hemiah Lincoln, son of Gideon and Martha (Perkins) Lincoln, 
bom on November 8, 1782. He had married (ist), on January 
10, 1802, Martha, daughter of Simeon Packard. He died on 
March 7, 1861. 

Children ; 

866. David Edson Lincoln, bom on November 8, 1823. 

867. Nehemiah Lincoln, born on July 21, 1824. 

868. Daniel Lincoln, born on June 19, 1826. 

869. David Lincoln, born on November 29, 1828. 

870. Amelia Lincoln, born on December 25, 1832. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 539 

493. Jesse, son of Joseph 213 and Alary (X'inal) Edscm, born 
in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on July 12, 
1787, married there, on July 4, 181 1, Anne, daughter of Josiah 
and Hannah (Kingman) Williams, born in 1789. 

Children : 

871. Stillman Williams, born in the town of Bridgewater on December 8, 1812. 

872. Alanson Sumner, born in the town of Bridgewater on November 14, i 81 3. 

873. George Francis, born in the town of Bridgewater on January 29, 1S16. 
George Francis Edson 873 died on March 2, 181 6. 

510. Zilpah, daughter of Josiah 218 and Reliance (Fuller) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on March 2, 1778, married there, on November 26, 1801, 
Eliphalet Kingman, son of Matthew and Jane (Packard) King- 
man, bom there on February 18, 1775. She died in North 
Bridgewater, on March 31, 1853, and he on October 31, 1856, 

Children : 

874. Lucius Kingman, bom in North Bridgewater on January 23, 1803. 

875. Matthew Kingman, born in North Bridgewater on February 24, 1807. 

876. Adeline Kingman, born in North Bridgewater on October 2, 1809. 

877. Isaac Kingman, born in North Bridgewater on December 12, 1811. 

878. Davis Kingman, bom in North Bridgewater on February 27, 1814. 

879. Lucia Kingman, born in North Bridgewater on September 14, 1816. 

880. EHphalet Kingman, born in North Bridgewater on February 18, 1821. 

511. Susanna, daughter of Josiah 218 and Reliance (Fuller) 
Edson, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass, on May 31, 1780, married there on December 27, 1801, 
Israel Packard, son of Jonathan and Susanna (Alger) Packard, 
born in 1779. She died on January 15, 1855, and he on January 
17, 1856. 

Children : 

881. Josiah Packard, born on March 22, 1803. 

882. Melvin Packard, born on January i, 1804. 

883. Sidney Packard, born on January 23, 1806. 

884. Liberty Packard, liorn on July 29, 1808. 
88.5. Arvilki Packard, born on Sept. 7, 18 10. 
88G. Israel Packard, born on Felnaiary 23, 181 3. 

887. Alpheus Packard, born on July 19, 1815. 

888. Henry A. Packard, l)orn on April 22, 1818. 

889. Susanna Packard, born on May 6, 1821. 

890. David Cobb Packard, born on April 30, 1824. 

513. Sarah, daughter of Josiah 218 and I\c-liance (Fuller) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plvmoiiili Countv, 
Mass., on November 17, 1783, married there, on April 3, 180(1, 
Ira Hayward, son of Waldo and Lucy (Bartlett) Hayward, bom 



540 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

on September i8, 1782. She died on June 29, 181 9, and he mar- 
ried, in 1820, Susanna Fish, widow. He died on Februaryi4, 1850. 
Children of Sarah : 

891. Otis HayTvard, born on December 6, 1806. 

892. Ambrose Hayward, born on January 10, 1810. 

893. Sumner Augustus Hayward, born on July 20, 1S12. 

894. Julia Hay^vard, born on October 4, 1814. 

895. Sarah Reliance Hayward, bom on March 8, 181 8. 

514. Barnabas, son of Josiah 218 and ReHance (Fuller) Ed- 
son, born in the town of Bridgcwater, Plymouth County, Mass., 
on March 5, 1786, married there, on January i, 181 5, Elizabeth 
Gumey, daughter of Zechariah and Matilda (Packard) Gumey, 
bom in 1790. He died on May 30, 1859. 

Children : 

896. Harriet Allen, born on September 29, 181 5. 

897. Sarah Hayward, born on November 17, 181 9. 

898. Josiah, born on March 27, 1822. 

899. James, born on August 15, 1824. 

900. Matilda Gurncy, born on April 3, 1827. 

Harriet Allen Edson 896 married, on October 7, 1838, Andrew Murdock; 
Sarah Hay^ward Edson 897 married, on October 14, 1858, Amos Dunbar; James 
Edson 899 married Charlotte Curtis, of Scituate; and Matilda Gumey Edson 900 
married, on November 18, i860, Wilson Morse. 

515. Esther, daughter of Josiah 218 and Reliance (Fuller) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on July 20, 1788 married, on November 29, 1810, Am- 
brose Kingman, son of Seth and Judith (Washburn) Kingman, 
of Reading, bom in North Bridgewater, on March 20, 1789. She 
died there, on June 12, 1838, and he married, on November 29, 
1838, Ruth, daughter of Daniel Pratt, of Reading, Mass., who 
died on February 27, 1845. He married (3d), on December 23, 
1845, Mary, daughter of William Richards, of Falmouth, Me., 
who died in 1862. He married (4th), on March 30, 1864, Roxana, 
daughter of Abiel Brown, of Tewksbury, Mass. 

Children of Esther : 

901. Francis Kingman, born on September 5, 1811. 

902. Nancy Adams Kingman, born on November 7, 181 3. 

903. Esther Elvira Kingman, born on June 19, 181 5. 

904. Alden Bradford Kingman, born on August 29, 181 7. 

905. Josiah Edson Kingman, born on September 25, 181 9. 

906. Sarah Jane Kingman, born on September 23, 1822. 

907. Josiah Alden Kingman, born on November 22, 1823. 

908. Dianthe Jane Kingman, born on October 11, 1825. 

909. Susan Adeline Kingman, born on January 22, 1830. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 541 

516. Reliance, daughter of Josiah 218 and Reliance (Fuller) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, ]\Iass., 
on February q, 1792, married there, on December 7, 181 8, Joel 
Ames, son of Job and Mary (Dike) Ames, bom in 1787. 

Children : 

910. Horace Ames, born on June 22, 1821. 

911. Abigail Ames, born on September 22, 1822. 

912. Sarah Fuller Ames, bom on September 3, 1S26. 

913. Luther Ames, born on March 2, 1828. 

914. Olive Noyes Ames, bom on August 6, 1832. 

517. Olive, daughter of Josiah 218 and Reliance (Fuller) Ed- 
son, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., 
on May 5, 1795, married there, on December 28, 1818, Jacob 
Noyes, son of Ephraim and Sarah (Dike) Noyes, bom dh March 
5, 1795. She died on April 13, 1853. 

Children : 

915. Henry Augustus Noyes, bom in North Bridgewater on September 28, 

1820. 

916. Lewis Ellingwood Noyes, born in North Bridgewater (ui July 23, 1S23. 

519. Josiah, son of Josiah and Hannah (Lawrence) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, ])n^vince of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on January 31, 1766, married 
there, on February 9, 1791, Susanna Richards. 

Child: 

917. Joshua. 

Joshua Edson 917 married, on August 16, 1820, Clarissa C. Osbom, of 
Bridgewater. 

522. Abiel. son of Abiel 242 and Hannah (Norton) Edson, 

bom in 1775, married, in Somers, Tolland County, Conn., 

on February 5, 1795, Sarah Kibbie. He died in Randol])h, Vt., 

on January 28, 1852, and she also there on September 22, 1852. 

Children : 
91S. Loring, bom on November 27, 1795. 

919. Sophronia, bom on June 20, 1799. 

920. Olive, bom on April 10, 1802. 

921. Loring Abiel, born on I)eceml)er 24, 1803. 

Loring Edson 918 died on July 5, 1800. Olive Edson ()2o married Titus 
Eastman of Randolph, Vt. Loring Al)iel 921 marric>(l, March iS, 1S4-, Harriet 
Story. 

545. Ca]\-in, son of Cal\in 2-:,() and Lydia (ConanO Edson, 
born in tlie town of Bridgewater, Ph'inoulli County. ])ro\'ince of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on jul\- k), 177,^. married 
(ist), in 1797, Martlia I )unbar, n\ tlic town oi liridgewater, bom 



542 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

on September 19, 1777. She died on October 11, 1830, and he 
married (2d), on December 3, 1835, Rebecca Crosby, of Spring- 
field, Mass. 
Children : 

922. Alice Alger, bom in Oakham, Mass., on October 21, 1798. 

923. Harriet, born in Oakhatn, Mass., on July 14, 1802. 

924. Hiram, born in Oakham, Mass., on November 27, 1804. 

925. Silas Dunbar, born in Oakhain, Mass., on March 3, 1807. 

926. Eliza, born in Oakham, Mass., on June 10, 1810. 

927. Mary Ann, born in North Brookfield, Mass., on September 3, 1813. 

928. Lavinia, born in North Brookfield, Mass., on April 3, 1816. 

929. William Fiske, born in North Brookfield, Mass., on December 4, 1818. 

557. Jacob, son of Jacob 269 and Elizabeth (Packard) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, province of 
Massachusetts Bay, New England, on February 20, 1765, mar- 
ried, in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., on Novem- 
ber 29, 1792, Eunice Bradley. 

Children : 

930. Royal, born in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., on September 

10. 1793- 

931. George, born in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., on June 23, 

1795- 

932. Eunice, born in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., July 12, 

1798. 
Royal, Edson 930 married, in the town of Stafford, on August 21, 1820 
Levina Rose. 

On April 7, 1788, Jacob Edson 557 took the oath of fidelity to 
the State of Connecticut, as required by law. 

563. Sarah, daughter of Seth 273 and Theodora (Howard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on February 28, 1787, married there, on December i, 
1808, Nathaniel, son of Isaac Shepardson, of Dedham, bom on 
October 5, 1784. She died in the town of Bridgewater, on 
August 27, 181 2, and he married (2d) her sister Anne 568. She 
died, and he married (3d), on October 5, 181 7, Sally, daughter of 
Manasseh Dickerman. She died on September 16, 1843, ^^^^ 
he married (4th), on August 21, 1852, Polly Reynolds, daughter 
of Isaac French of Stoughton, Mass. He died in Aurora, Ind., on 
March 12, 1857, and his widow married, on November 27, 1862, 
Elisha Washburn. 

Children of Sarah : 

933. Mary Wood Shepardson, born on April 14, 1810. 

934. Nathaniel Shepardson, bom on September 2, 181 1. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 543 

568. Anne, daughter of Seth 273 and Theodora (Howard) 
Edson, born in tlie town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on July 8, 1796. She married, on Mareh 4, 1815, Na- 
thaniel Shepardson, who had l)een husband of her sister Sarah, 
and died on September 29, 1816. Shepardson married twice 
afterward. (See Sarah 563.) 

Child: 

935. Sarah Anne Shepardson, born on April ii, 1816. 

569. Galen, son of Seth 273 and Theodora (Howard) Edson, 
boni in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on 
February 19, 1800; married, on October 10, 1822, Mary Ann, 
daughter of John Oliver, of Lynn, Mass. He died on September 
18, 1852. 

Children : 

936. Mary Ann, born on August 19, 1824. 

937. Seth, bom on April 18, 1S28 

938. Mary Ann, bom on January 16, 1830. 

939. Caroline Howard, bom on March 6, 1832. 
940 Galen, bom on September 26, 1833. 

941. Ann Sophia, bom on June 20, 1835. 

942. John, bom on April 26, 1837. 

943. Emily B., bom on October 16, 1838. 

944. Ann Sophia, bom on August 30, 1840. 
94.5. William, bom on December 6, 1843. 

946. Mar}^, born on July 2, 1845. 

Mary Ann 936 died on September 26, 1828; Mary Ann 938 on March 16, 1S32 ; 
Ann Sophia 941 on September 14, 1836; Emily B., 943 on September 8, 1841 ; 
Ann Sophia 944 on September 10, 1841; William 945 on March i, 1847; and 
Mary 946 on October 2, 1847. 

Galen Edson 940 married Harriet Wash. In the Civil War he was in Com- 
pany F, Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Vohmtecrs, and died at Culpeper 
Covirt House, Virginia. 

573. Amasa, son of Wilham 276 and Mary (Randall) Edson, 
bom ill the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth (^Hlnty, Mass., mar- 
ried, on April 22, 1838, Mary, daughter of Jacob Edson. 

Child : 

947. Hiram Allen, bom on February 8, 1839. 

574. Milly, daughter of WilHam 276 and Mary (Randall) Ed- 
son, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., 
married there, on July 7, 181 7, Hosea Alden, son of Samuel and 
Hannah (Williams) Alden, of Abington. He died on Marcli 5, 
1837, and she on June 3, 1851. 

Children : 

948. Daniel Randall Aldcn, born in 1S25. 



544 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

949. Abigail Williams Alden, born in 1S2-. 

950. Luther Edson Alden, born on September 24, 1830. 

598. Freeman Willard, son of Benjamin 281 and Anna (John- 
son) Edson, bom in the town of Stafford, Tolland County, Conn., 
on August 17, 1804; married, in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., 
on December 31, 1829, Sarah Sheldon, daughter of Henry and 
Joanna (Peckham) Sheldon, bom there, on June 24, 1808. She 
died in Otego, on March 5, 1895, and he also there, on March 30, 
1896. 

Children : 

951. Benjamin, born in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., on May 26, 1831. 

952. Henry Sheldon, born in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., on April 9, 1835. 

953. Martin Atistin, bom in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., on August 5, 1846. 

954. Joanna, bom in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., on July 2, 1855. 

Martin Austin Edson 953 married in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., on April i 5 , 
1869, Nancy, daughter of Elkanah and Atilda (Hathaway) Mead, bom in Otego. 
Joanna 954 married in the town of Butternuts, Otsego County, New York, on 
September 20, 1880, Silas, son of Aaron and Rachel (Foster) Rider, bom in 

Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, N. Y., on December 25, . His first wife 

Helen Clark, died in January, 1880. 

603. Guy, son of Seth 282 and Desire (Comstock) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on 
March 19, 1794, married there Rhoda Packard, bom on August 
17, 1706. She died in Readstown, Wis., on June 14, 1864, and 
he in Soldiers Grove, Wis., on October 18, 1883. 

Children : 

955. Mary, born on October 1,1815. 

956. Rufus, bom on January 30, 1820. 

957. William, born on June 22, 1822. 

958. Jane, bom on February 24, 1825. 

959. Seth, bom on July 7, 1827. 

960. Hannah, bom on March 14, 1832. 

961. Eliza, born on October 15, 1834. 

962. Lydia, bom in Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on September 23, 1838. 
William 957 married Lucy Norton, of Union Center, N. Y., and died Novem- 
ber 9, 1902. His son, Wyman L., lives at Union Center, and is a Justice of 
the Peace. Jane 958 married George Smith. Her daughter, Mrs. Helen (Smith) 
Harriman, lives at Hampton, Iowa. Seth 959 lives at Readstown, Wis. Eliza 
inarried N. Brigham, and lives at Soldiers Grove, Wis. Lydia married William 
Raymond, and lives in Los Angeles, Cal. 

William 957 had other children: Charles W., living in Elmira, N. Y. ; Elmer 
B., living in Dunkirk; Lewis E., living in the same place. 

604. Harley, son of Seth 282 and Desire (Comstock) Edson, 
bom in Tyringham, Berkshire County, Mass., on February 12, 
1796; married, in Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on October 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 545 

23, 1817, Phoebe Heath, dauL,ditcr of Joseph and Patience Heath, 
bom m Massachusetts, on February 25, ivSoo. He died in Wind- 
sor, N. Y., on March 7, 1838, and she married (2d) Kbenezer 
Weeks. She died on May 19, 1890. 
Children : 

9G3. Joseph C, born in the town of Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on August 
3- 1818. 

9G4. Isaac C, born in the town of Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on July 3, 
1823. 

965. Emily D., born in the town of Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on Sep- 
tember 1,1829. 
Joseph C. Edson 963 died in Windsor, N. Y. , on Mareh 12, 1843. Emily D. 

Edson 965 married (ist), in Windsor, N. Y., on November 11, 1847, Garry 

Stillson; and (2d) Lyman Treadwell. 

634. EHzabeth Howard, daughter of Nathaniel 312, and 
Elizabeth (Hayward) Edson, bom in Bridgewater, Mass., on 
January 22, 1807: married, on November 18, 1829, Joseph 
Kingman, bom March 14, 1799. He had married previously, in 
1 82 1. Pie died October 13, 1876. His widow died April 20, 1899. 

Children: 

965 A. Martha Kinginan, bom on Mareh 9, 1833. 

965 B Elizabeth Kingrnan, bom on April 30, 1836. 

965 c. Lucy Kingman, bom on March 14, 1S39. 

965 D. Horace Mann Kingman, born on October 29, 1848. 

Martha 965 a married, February 12, 1861, Alpheus Crosby, and she was 
living, in April, 1902, in the old hoine of the Kingmans in West Bridgewater, 
Mass. Elizabeth 965 b was living in the same place, tmmarried. Lucy 965 c 
died, January 31, 1870, unmarried. Horace 965 d died May 23, 1850. 

645. Timothy, son of Timothy 321 and Susanna (Orcutt) 
Edson, bom in the town of Stafford, Hartford Count v. Conn., 
on March 20, 1778; married Mary Downer. He died in the 
town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on Feliruary 18, 1801. 
The widow married James Robinson. She died, about 1821, at 
Middlebury, \'t. 

Children : 

965 E. Timothy, born in Bethel, Windsor County, Vt. 
966. Susan, born in Bethel, Windsor County, Vt., on July 15, 1799. 
Timothy 965 e died in Randoljih, Vt., January 19, 1809. 

649. John, son of Timothy 321 and Susanna (Orcutt) Edson, 
born April 9, 1790, married, at Randol]ih, \'t., September 7, 
1815, Emilv Perlec Clemens, or Clement, born in Xorwich, Conn., 
in T799, daughter of a professor in Yale College. John enlisted 

in the War of 181 2. 

35 



546 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Children : 

967. George D wight, born on October 14, 181^ 
967 A. Elizabeth Jensatta, bom in 1821. 

968. Pascal Paola, bom in 1824. 

969. Emily Juanna Catharine, born in Randolph, Orange County, Vt. , August, 

1829. 

George Dwight Edson 967 married Isabelle Graham Kimball, and died in 
Illinois, either at Mount Sterling or at Rockford. They had children; (a) 
Frances Isabella, bom July 18, 1846, died September 11, 1877, married Charles 
Van Inuregan, but had no child; (b) George Alvin, born January 22, 1848, 
died October 26, 1895, married, November 25, 1873, C. Minninck, and had 
children: Edna Belle, born at Richford, 111., September, 1874; Alvin Hiram, 
born October, 1876; Dwight Clement, born July, 1881; Charles, born Omaha, 
Neb., March, 1885; and Jessie, bom Albion, Neb., September, 1888; (c) Ida 
Elizabeth, born October 18, 1853, lives at Sewickley, Pa ; (d) Edward Holyoke, 
bom February 7, 1856, married Mary E. Holmes, but has no child; (e) William 
Frederick, born September 18, 1858, died September 12, 1859; (f) Lilla'Emma, 
bom October 21, 1861, married April i, 1884, Charles Gilbert AlljSii, and had: 
Merle Louise, born Omaha, July 4, 1885, died December 28, 1885; Eunice Belle, 
bom Ainsworth, Neb., September 12, 189^ ; William Dwight, bom July 6, 1895. 

Elizabeth Jensatta 967A died in October, 185 1, unmarried. 

Pascal Paola 968 died in 1874, in Illinois, either at Mount Sterling or at 
Rockford. He married Elsie Hazard. They had children: (a) Florence, born 
in 1852, married, in 1874, Edgar Swan, and resides in Winnebago, 111.; (b) 

Elma, married ; (c) Royal, married , lives in Iowa; (d) Clement; (e) 

Ernst. 

Emily Juanna Catharine 969 married (ist), in September, 1849, Douglas 
Ritchie Bashnell, born in Norwich, Conn., June 17, 1824. was killed, November 
27, 1863, at the battle of Ringgold, Ga. He was a major of the Ninth Regiment 
of Illinois Volunteers in the War for the Union. She married (2d), in 1871, 
Major Miles S. Henry, born in Geneva, N. Y., in 1817, died in 1878. They re- 
sided in Rockford, 111. She had children by her first husband: (a) Emma 
Louisa, married John H. Lawrence; (b) Grace Edson, married Chester Noble 
Clark; and (c) Cora Douglas, married Edward C. Underwood. Mrs. Emma L. 
Lawrence had children: Louise H., married Chester Willoughby Shoch; Ethel 
Douglas, Douglas H., and Mildred H. Mrs. Grace E. Clark had children: 
Virginia, who died October 22, 1897, and Beulah Henry. Mrs. Cora D. Under- 
wood had children: Milo C. and Nathan, twins. 

651. Alvin, son of Timothy 321 and Susanna (Orcutt) Edson, 
boni in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., October 10, 
1796; married, in Charlestown, Mass., on April 27, 1829, Cath- 
arine Henley Soley, daughter of John and Rebecca Tyng (Hen- 
ley) vSoley, baptized in Charlestown, on March 2, 1806. She 
died at the Navy- Yard, Portsmouth, N. H., in 1837, and he, of 
yellow fever, on board of the United States frigate Raritau, on 
her passage from Havana to Norfolk, Virginia, Juh^ 15, 1847, 
after the expiration of his term of service. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 547 

Child : 

970. John Henry, horn in the- Marine Barracks, Brooklyn, N. Y., on January 

18, 1830. 

Alvin Ed son 651 entered the United States MiHtary Academy 
at West Point, N. Y., in 1817, and after two years' attendance 
there he was induced to resign and take part in tlie survey of 
the Northwest Territory. While so engaged he was, on May 7, 
1822, appointed Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. General 
Atkinson presented him a cane with silver mountings, which is 
still in possession of his son as an heirloom. On March 14, 1829, 
he was made First Lieutenant, and on October 6, 1841, Captain. 
In Alarch, 1847, ""^ the siege of Vera Cruz, and other operations in 
the Gulf of Mexico, he won high distinction for his military 
ability and bravery. 

In the Census of Pensioners, on June i, 1840, he is named as 
forty-three years of age and as residing with Luther Edson, in 
Randolph, Orange County, Vt. 

656. Joseph, son of Josiah 323 and Sarah (Pinney) Edson, 
bom in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on March 3, 
1782, married, on September 29, 1802, Sarah, daughter of Na- 
thaniel de Troope (or Throop), born on June 28, 1783, in the town 
of Bethel, Windsor County, Vt. He died in Randolph. \^t., on 
March 7, 1832, and she also there, on June 20, 1863. 

Children : 

971. Elizabeth, born in Randolph, Vt., on April 23, 1804. 

972. Sarah, born in Randolph, Vt., on Jtme 2, 1806. 

973. Nathaniel, born in Randolph, Vt., on Octo1)er 11, 1S08. 

974. Royal, bom in Randolph, Vt., on January 5, 181 1. 

975. Olivia Chase, bom in Randolph, Vt., on January 15, 1824. 
Nathaniel 973, a graduate of Union College, at Schenectady, N. Y., studied 

law in Albany, N. Y., and with the Hon. Judge Dudley Chase, in Randolph, 
Vt. "He settled at Boston, but subsequently removed to New York City, 
where he died suddenly of heart disease, April 2, 1853. He never married. 

Royal 974 married Adeline Arnold and resided in Woodstock, Vt., where he 
was merchandising when he died on April 12, 1S49, leaving one child, Lima, 
who never married. The widow and daughter, who subsequcntl}' resided with 

Mrs. Edson's uncle, Governor Converse, "died Avithin a week of each 

other." 

Joseph Edson 656, the father, resided until his dcatli in Ran- 
dolph. In 1805, he was elected constable-, wliieh oflicc lu" (died 
for four years. In the years 1812, '13, '15. 'lO, '17. '18, "u), '20, 
'21, and '22, he was sheriff of Orange Count w I'rcni 1S15 to 



548 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

182 1, he was one of the school trustees of the town of Randolph. 
From 1825 to 1829, he was United States Marshal for Ver- 
mont, receiving the appointment from President John Quincy 
Adams. 

The descent of the British upon Plattsburgh, in September, 
1 814, caused a call for volunteers to be sent to Randolph, Vt., on 
Friday, the 9th, which reached the place about nightfall. Major 
Joseph Edson and other officers of the local militia determined to 
comply with the request, and during the night the necessary 
preparations were made to march on Saturday to Montpelier, 
Arriving there in the afternoon, and having been supplied with 
arms and ammunition, the force pushed on to Waterbury, where 
a stay overnight was made. Early on Sunday morning, the 
nth, when the company was ascending the hill near Richmond, 
the report of guns in the direction of Lake Champlain intimated 
that an engagement was begun. On reaching Burlington, it was 
discovered that no craft was in port to carry the force across the 
lake. Late on Sunday evening the intelligence of Commodore 
MacDonough's victory was brought to Burlington, causing no 
little surprise and much rejoicing. The body of militia and 
volunteers from Randolph attempted on Monday to sail to 
Plattsburgh on an old sloop, but, having stranded on the rocks 
near Juniper Island, the effort was abandoned. On Tuesday, 
the scene of the ruined buildings in the village was curiously 
viewed, and the particulars of the engagement with the eneniy 
there eagerly heard. The company, commanded by Captain 
Libbeus Egerton, comprised ninety-two men, eighty -five of whom 
were from Randolph, among whom were Sergeant John Joy 
Edson and his brother, Josiah Edson, junior. 

On October 30, 1818, Joseph Edson was selected a brigadier- 
general by the governor and council of Vermont, and on October 
25, 1822, major-general of the Vermont Militia. He was, as was 
his father, a prominent Mason, and for a number of years Grand 
Master of the Order in the State of Vermont. 

658. Josiah, son of Josiah 323 and Sarah fPinney) Edson, 
bom in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on April 13, 
1786, married Elizabeth Porter, born in 1787, half-sister of 
George B. Porter, who was governor of Michigan in 1831. They 
settled in Ohio, where he died, about 1827. The family returned 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 549 

to the town of Randolph, wlierc his \vi(h)w (lied on March 18, 
1832, aged forty-five years. 
Children: 

970. William, born in the town of Ramlolph, on April 23, 181 1. 

977. Susan, born in the town of Randolph, in 1S15. 

978. Joseph, born in Ohio in 181 9. 

979. Mary Ann, born in Ohio in 1823. 

William 976 married, in August, 1844, Martha Story, of the town of Ran- 
dolph. For a number of years before his marriage he was a pilot on the Missis- 
sippi River. After his mother's death his brother Joseph 978 and two sisters, 
at his invitation, made their home with him in St. Louis, Mo. He had no 
offspring. The date of his death is not known. His wife is still living. 

Susan 977 married, in December, 1S44, L. J. Garrison, of St. Louis, Mo. 
Children; William, Olivia, Elizabeth, and Tappan. 

Joseph 978 died in October, 1848, unmarried, in St. Louis. 

Mary Ann 979 married in St. Louis, Tully W. Strobridge, a native of Ver- 
mont. They removed, in 1849, to California, and lived many years in Los 
Angeles, where she died, in October, 1893, aged seventy j^ears. 

659. Sarah, daughter of Josiah 323 and Sarah (Pinney) Ed- 
son, bom in the town of Randolph, Orange Count v, Vt., on 
October 27, 1788, married, in 1808, Parker Whitney of Aurelius, 
N. Y. She died in 1827. 

Children ; 

980. Chatmcey Parker Whitney, tidrn in Aurelius, N. Y., in 1812. 

981. Constant Whitney, born in Aurelius in 181 5. 

661. John Joy, son of Josiah 323 and Sarah (Pinne)'') Edson, 
bcn-n in the town of Randolph. Orange County, Vt., on May 27, 
1794, married, in October, 1816, Sarah Barnes. He died in 1823, 
in Aurelius, CctyugR County, N. Y. 

Children : 

/>'9S2. Chauncey Barker, born in Aurelius on April 24, 1S17. 
' 983. Sarah Philena, liorn in Aurelius on No\"eml)er 5, 1819. 
984 Joseph Josiah, l)orn in Aurelius on January 24, 1821. 
985. Susan Ann, burn in Aurelius on Juni' 24, 1S23. 

Jose]ih Josiah 9S4 married Mary Munger, and as a ])hysician piracticed 
medicine in Geneva, O. The fruit of their marriage was a daughter. Eslelle, 
who died young. Susan .\nn 985 was "one of the lirst women to study 
medicine as a profession, and many were the dilliculties with which she had to 
contend. But her will was indomitable, and she succeeded, and established a 
good practice at Jefferson, O. When the Rebellion broke out she offered her 
ser\'ices, which were gladly accepted, and as a nurse. ])hysician. and surgeon, 
she served at Washington and F'ortress .Monroe during the whole war. making a 
record for herself second to none. After the war she returned to Washington 
and resumed her jiractice, where she gained the summit of success in her pro- 
fession. Slu' ni'\"er married, liut was an imjiortant factor in the bringing uji 
of her sister's children, and made her jileasant home a welcome resting-place 
for her mother and h;ilf-sistcrs and other relatives. Hers was the warm heart 



550 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

and the generous hand. Her health was greatly impaired by her devoted ser- 
vices to President Garfield, whose family physician and long-time friend she 
was. She died at her home in Washington November 14, 1898, after a short 
illness." 

662. Harriette Albina, daughter of Josiah 323 and Sarah 
(Pinney) Edson, bom in the town of Randolpli, Orange County, 
Vt., on April 13, 1797; married, in AureHus, Cayuga County, 
N. Y., on January 3, 182 1, Milton Hyde. He died at Grosse 
Isle, near Detroit, Mich., on June 9, 1866, and she also there on 
August 30, 1879. Milton was a descendant of Wilham Hyde, 
of Norwich, Conn. 

Children : 

986. Joseph Edson Hyde, bom in Livonia, Livingston County, N. Y., on 

June 16, 1822. 

987. Susan Adeline Hyde, born in Livonia, Livingston County, N. Y., on 

September 6, 1823. 

988. George Randolph Hyde, born in Livonia, Livingston County, N. Y., on 

July 24, 1825. 

989. William Augustvis Hyde, born in Livonia, Livingston County, N. Y., on 

February 25, 1827. 

990. Mary Sophia Hyde, born in Livonia, Livingston County, N. Y., on Decem- 

ber 14, 1828. 

991. Sarah Maria Hyde, born in Livonia, Livingston County, N. Y., on Decem- 

ber 14, 1828. 

992. Lydia Albina Hyde, born in Auburn, Oakland County, Mich., on April 24, 

1831. 

993. Lydia Elizabeth Hyde, bom in Auburn, Oakland County, Mich., on Sep- 

tember I, 1833. 

994. Harriette Isabella Hyde, bom in Auburn, Oakland County, Mich., on 

April 15, 1836. 

995. Charles Milton Hyde, born in Auburn, Oakland County, Mich., on Decem- 

ber 21, 1838. 

996. Julia Josephine Hyde, born in Auburn, Oakland County, Mich., on June 

28, 1841. 

663. Daniel Sherwood, son of Josiah 323 and Sarah (Pinney) 
Edson, bom in the town of Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on 
March lo, 1799, married Mrs. Dorothy (Goodale) Pease, eleven 
years his senior. He died about 1850. She lived to be ninety 
years old, and died at Grand Lodge, Mich. 

Children ; 

997. Daniel Sherod, born in Springfield, Mass., on January 2, 1825. 

998. Dorothy Ann, born in Ware, Mass., on October 27, 1826. 

999. Sarah Albina, bom on November 15, 1830. 

664. Lydia Alexander, daughter of Josiah 323 and Sarah 
(Pinney) Edson, bom in the town of Randolph, Orange County, 
Vt., in August, 1 80 1, married, in 181 7, Ebenezer Smith, of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 551 

Fleming, Cayuga County, N. Y.. born in May, 1795. Slicdicd in 
Wacousta, Clinton County, xMich., in 1859, and he in March, 1863. 
Children. : 

1000. Sarah Pinney Smith, born in Fleming, N. Y., on November 5, 1S18. 

1001. Josiah Edson Smith, l)orn in Fleming, N. Y., on January 2, 1820. 

1002. Adoniram Jvidson Smith, born in Aulnirn, Oakland O^unty, Mich., on 

March 24, 182S. 

6S4. Sophia, daughter of Jonathan t,^^^, and Rel)ecca (Ciraves) 
Edson, born in Whately, Franklin ('ounty, Mass., about 1790; 
married (ist) Horatio Crane, son of Joseph and Eleanor (Buck) 
Crane, born on February 23, 1795. He was killed on his farm in 
the town of Jericho, Chittenden County, \^t., on March 10, 1828, 
while clearing a piece of land. She married (2d) Simon Cotton. 

Children : 

1003. George H. Crane, born in the town of Williamstown, Orange County, 

Vt., on October 6, 1823. 

1004. Sophia Crane, bom in the town of Williamstown, Orange Count}', Vt., 

in January, 1827. 

Horatio Crane 684 was a farmer, and lived until 1827 in the 
town of Williamstown, Orange County, when he purchased a 
farm in the town of Jericho, Chittenden County, where he met 
his death, as mentioned. 

685. Lucius, son of Jonathan t,^^ and Rebecca (Graves) 
Edson, born in tlie town of Brookfield, Orange Co., \'t., in 1795, 
married Matilda Ainsworth, born in the town of Brookfield, in 
1802. 

Children : 

1005. Marshall L., born in the town of Xorthfield, Washington County. Vt., 

in 1830. 

1006. Alice J., born in 1833. 

1007. E. Annette, born in 1836. 

Lucius Edson 685 removed from the town of Brookfield to 
the town of Northfiekl in 1822. He and Arba Crane bought from 
Solomon Dunham the cloth-dressing business in which he was 
engaged, in Captain Jesse Averill's district, near Judge Painc's 
grist-mill. Thev ]jursucd the business there for a time, and 
then Lucius Edson withdrew and went to the south village, where 
he added \\-ool-car(ling to the ek)th-dressing business, which he 
successfulh' followed. 

()S7. lerah, son of Amasa 337 and Ilannali (Niorton) I-Mson. 
born in the town of Wlialclv, I'ranklin County. .Mass.. on A])ril 
II, 1788, married LJiere, on August 12, 1809, Sophia Stiles, 



552 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

daughter of Lewis and Electa (Pomeroy) Stiles, born in the 
town of Whately, on November 7, 1786. She died in Brook- 
field, Orange County, Vt., on October 11, 1857, and he married 
(2d) Laura AbVjott of Brookfield. He died there, in March, 1870. 
Children : 

1008. Shepard, born in Brookfield, Vt., on July 25, 1810. 

1009. Henry, born in Brookfield, Vt., on May 8, 181 2. 

1010. Amasa, born in Brookfield, Vt., on August 29, 181 4. 

1011. Electa Pomeroy, boni in Brookfield, Vt., on May 31, 1816. 

1012. Edward, born in Brookfield, Vt., on May 31, 1819. 

1013. Marshall, born in Brookfield, Vt., on November 21, 1821. 

1014. Jerah, born in Brookfield, Vt., on June 5, 1825. 

1015. Sophia, born in Brookfield, Vt., on October 11, 1827. 

Jerah Edson 687 was a fanner and a man greatly esteemed 
by his neighbors and acquaintances. 

Shepard Edson 1008 died on August 24, 1844; Amasa Edson loio, on Jan- 
uary 12, 1 81 5; Edward Edson 1012 died on November 14, 1839; Marshall Edson 
1013 died on January 7, 1858; Sophia Edson 1015 married Leonard F. Davis, 
and died in November, 1853. They had children: Helen S. Davis, who married 
Walter S. Roberts, and lived at Oakland, Kan.; Elsie Davis, who married 
Edwin R. Sweet, of Alden, Minn., and died in 1900; and Marshall Davis, who 
died in 1858. 

688. Harris, son of Amasa 337 and Hannah (Morton) Edson, 
born in the town of Whately, Franklin County, Mass., on August 
21, 1791, married (ist) Mary Thacher. She died on September 
8, 1834, and he married (2d), on January 29, 1835, Emily Thacher. 
vShe died on August 15, 1867, and he on November 9, 1872. 

Children by first wife : 

1016. George Harris, born on August 30, 1826. 

1017. Martha Morgan, born on May 26, 1828. 

1018. Eliza, born on February 24, 1831. 

1019. Mary, born on March 4, 1833. 

1020. Albert Edgerton, born on February 10, 1834. 

Children by second wife: 

1021. Charles Morgan, born on January 5, 1836. 

1022. Catharine Trask, born on June 11, 1837. 

1023. Henry, bom on November 13, 1839. 

1024. Charles Albert, born on December 14, 1840. 

1025. Martha Ann, born on May 19, 1843. 

1026. Edwin Thacher, born on August 31, 1848. 

George Harris 1016 died on May i, 1865; Martha Morgan 1017, on July 8. 
1831; Eliza 1018, on August 6, 1857; Mary 1019, in September, 1834; Albert 
Edgerton 1020, in January, 1836; Charles Morgan 102 1, on June 6, 1S3S; 
Catharine Trask 1022, on October 25, 1865 ; Henry 1023, on December 18, 1839; 
Charles Albert 1024, on March 7, 1864, in service in the Civil War; Edwin 
Thacher 1026, on September 6, 1856. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 553 

691. Lura, daughter of Amasa 327 and Hannah (Morton) 
Edson, was bom in BrDokfield, Vt., September i, 1798, and died 
May 13, 1879. She married Spencer Graves. 

Children : 

1026 a. Frances H. Graves, born in Brookfield, Vt., on January lo, 1S27. 
1026 B. Elizabeth Graves, l)orn in Brookfield, Vt., on January 22, 1S29. 
1()2()C. William Spencer Graves, born in Brookfield, Vt., on March 27, 1831. 
1026 u. Harriet Graves, born in Brookfield, Vt., on January 29, 1834. 
1026 E. Maria Graves, born in Brookfield, Vt., on September 22, 1837. 
1026 F. Albert Graves, born in Brookfield, Vt., on October 5, 1840. 

Frances H. Graves 1026 a died 'November ti, iqoo, unmarried; Elizabeth 
Graves 1026 b died in August, 1878, unmarried; William Spencer Graves 1026 c, 
born March 27, 1831, married, March 25, 1855, "Orpha" [Orpah] Howe; 
Harriet Graves 1026 d married (ist), March, 1S59, Henry Button, (2d) Novem- 
ber, 1882, Charles Button; Maria Graves 1026 e married, Becembcr 4, 1862, 
Terence Calogan; and Albert Graves 1026 f died October 27, 1853. 

692. Emily, daughter of Amasa 327 and Hannah (Morton) 
Edson, was bom in Brookfield, Yi., December 14, 1800, and died 
on April 7, 1868. She married, May 7, 1828, Caleb A. Stratton. 

Children : 

1026 G. Emily M. Stratton, Ixirn in Brookfield, Vt., November 13, 1830. 
1026 H. Cornelius Stratton, born in Brookfield, Vt., January 9, 1834. 
1026 I. Martha A. Stratton, born in Brookfield, Vt., August 25, 1836. 
1026 J. Harriet A. Stratton, born in Brookfield, Vt., October 22, 1838. 
1026 K. Lucia A. Stratton, born in Brookfield, Vt., August 30, 1840. 
1026 L. Carlos E. Stratton, born in Brookfield, Vt., June 12, 1844. 

Emily 1026 g married (ist), Becembcr 5, 1862, Nelson Graves, (2d), Aj^-il 
10, 1901, John Kerr; Martha 1026 i married, September 20, 1858, Elias Holt, 
and died May i, 1891; Harriet 1206 j married, July 19, 1899, George Cook; 
Lucia 1026 K married Frank Hoadley in Becembcr, 1868, and died Julv 31, 
1895; and Carlos 1026 l married, September 5, 1866 Annie Brown, and died 
February 14, 1890; Cornelius 1026 h married, February 3, 1879. at Marysvillc, 
Cal., Addie Ackley. 

693. Sophila, daughter of Amasa 327 and Hannali (Morton) 
Edson, wasl)()rn in Brookfield, \'t., Novemljcr 13, 1S03, and died 
May 13, 1870. She married, in 1828, Ehiali h\inan. l-^)ur of 
their cliildrcn died in carlv infancy. 

Cliild: 

1026 m Annette Lyman, born in Brookfield, \'t., on June 13, 1837. 

Annette Lyman married, January i, 1862, John A. Griswold, and resides 
at Plainfield, Vt. 

691. Hannali G., daughter of .\niasa 327 and Hannali (Mor- 
ton) J^^dson, was born in Brookfield, \'t., in 1803, and tlied l*\J)ru- 
arv 15, i860. She married, June jO, iSj(), Riuben iVek. 

Children : 



554 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

1026 N. Marcus Peck, born in Brookfield, Vt., on June 26, 1S34. 

1026 o. Aurclia B. Peck, bom in Brookfield, Vt., on April 10, 1836. 

1026 p. Cassius Peck, born in Brookfield, Vt., on March 3, 1842. 

1026 Q. Marshall Reuben Peck, born in Brookfield, Vt., on August 22, 1846. 

Marcus Peck married (ist), June 26, 1859, Mary Elizabeth Wilcox (2d), 
January 2, 1873, Adeline M. Wheatley; Aurelia B. Peck married, March 31, 
1861, George May, and died September 10, 1867; Cassius Peck married, April 
30, 1868, Luna A. Sprague; and Marshall Reuben Peck married, in July, 1875, 
Nellie Nelson, and died August 7, 1876. 

695. Lucinda, daughter of Samuel 344 and Hannah (Ripley) 
Edson, married, on May 27, 1828, Ziba Bass Bryant, son of Oliver 
and Nabb}^ (Ames) Bryant, bom October 16, 1804. 

Children : 

1027. Lucinda Adeline Bryant, born on February 23, 1829. 

1028. Ziba Hiram Bryant, born on May 27, 1830. 

1029. Franklin Edson Bryant, born on May 10, 1833. 

1030. Danville Foster Bryant, born on January 29, 1S36. 

1031. Henry Gififord Bryant, born on April 14, 1839. 

1032. Albert Francis Bryant, born on June 28, 1841. 

1033. Ellis Bryant, born on March 17, 1845. 
Ellis Bryant 1033 died July 7, 1845. 

731. Fanny Bryant, daughter of Jonah 361 and Jennet 
(Bryant) Edson, born in East Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on June 27, 1820, married there, on October 28, 1840, 
Levi B. Parker, son of Levi and Hannah (Giddings) Parker, 
bom in Lunenburg, Mass., on May 25, 181 1. She died in East 
Bridgewater, on March 26, 1880. 

Children : 

1034. George G. Parker, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., in Jtme, 1841. 

1035. Frank G. Parker, bom in East Bridgewater, Mass., on October 27, 
1842. 

1036. Abbic Curtis Parker, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on January 14. 

1845- 

1037. Jennet Parker, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., in 1847. 

1038. Alfred Bryant Parker, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on October 10, 

1849. 

1039. George B. Parker, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., in 1852. 

1040. Abbott Parker, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on September 12, 1855, 

1041. William Parker, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on August 26, 
1861. 

George G. 1034 died on November 6, 1841; Abbie Curtis 1036, on October 
4, 1868; Jennet 1037, on August 10, 1849; and George B. 1039, on May 3, 1855. 

732. Henry, son of Jonah 361 and Jennet (Bryant) Edson, 
bom in East Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on Septem- 
ber 2, 1822; married, in Brockton, Mass., on July 26, 1847, Mary 
Alice Stetson, daughter of Ethan Allen and Hannah (Baker) 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 555 

Stetson, bom in Hanson, Mass., on November 3, 1826. They 
are living" in East Bridgewater. 
Children : 

1042. Charles Henry, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on September 3, 1848. 

1043. Emma Clifford, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on June 14, 1851. 

1044. Mary Alice, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on December 1, 1855. 

1045. Jennie Stetson, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on June 2, 1858. 

1046. Nellie Maria, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on Febrviary 13, 1866. 

736. William, son of Jonah 361 and Jennet (Bryant) Edson, 
bom in East Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on April 30, 
1832 ; married, in East Bridgewater, by the Rev. T. O. Paine, on 
June 14, i860, Anne Isabella Mackinnon, daughter of Colin R. 
and Rhoda (Kenney) Mackinnon, born on March 20, 1834. 

Children : 

1047. Wilfred, born in Charlestown, Mass., on June 22, 1863. 
104S. Mabel F., bom in Stonehani, Mass., on November 12, 1871. 

1049. Amy Violet, born in Stoneham, Mass., on April 5, 1876. 
Wilfred died on March 7, 1873. 

William Edson 736 is a graduate of Brown University, and, 
as an expert in patent causes, devotes special attention to elec- 
trical and cliemical inventions; his office being Room t,2, No. 12 
Pearl Street, Boston, Mass. 

737. Seth Bryant, son of Jonah 361 and Jennet (Bryant) 
Edson, bom in East Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on 
April 24, 1835; married there, on June 4, 1867, Elizabeth D., 
daughter of George and Elizabeth (Devlois) Bryant, bom in 
East Bridgewater, on June 12, 1844. She died there, on June 4, 
1887. 

Children : 

1050. Albert B., born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on December 13, 1869. 

1051. John, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on April 4, 1873. 

1052. Frederick C, bom in East Bridgewater, Mass., on January 14, 1S77. 
John Edson 1051 married, in Bridgewater, Mass., on May 8, 1902, Sadie F., 

daughter of Mary A. Barnes. 

740. Nathan, son of Ephraim 363 and Mary (Howard) Ed- 
son, born in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., 
on April 13, 1831 ; married, in West Bridgewater, on xVovember 
27, 1862, luinice A. Rvdcr of tliat jdace. 

Child: 

105.3. Alice, bom on May 9, 1866. 

They reside in Charlestown, Mass. 

711. 'riieodore, son of I'^|)liraim 363 and Mar\' (Howard) 



556 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

PMson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on May 4, 1834; married Mattie Hannold of Boston, Ohio. 
Children : 

1054. Charles Allen, born on February 25, 1863. 

1055. Mary, bom in September, 1865. 

1056. Elizabeth, born in 186S. 

Charles Allen 1054 died on March 21, 1866; Mary 1055 on February 28, 1884. 

The family lives in Lockland, Ohio. 

743. Ephraim Davis, son of Ephraim 363 and Mary (How- 
ard) Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on December 24, 1841 ; married, on July 29, 1862, Mar- 
garet Ferguson of Bridgewater. He died in 1866. 

Children : 

1057. Annie Maria, bom on September 24, 1863. 

1058. Mary Davis, born on Augtxst 2, 1866. 

Annie Maria 1057 married Roderick Douglas Hall. They reside in WoUas- 
ton, Mass. 

Mary Davis 1058 married George B. Dainon, of Bridgewater, and resides 
there. 

744. Sibyl, daughter of Ephraim 363 and Mary (Howard) 
Edson, bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on January 27, 1845; married, in West Bridgewater, on 
November 12, 1871, Zeno Benson, son of Cyrus and Lydia W. 
(Leonard) Benson, bom in the town of Pawtucket, Mass., now 
Rhode Island. 

Children : 

1059. Charles Aubrey Benson, bom in West Bridgewater on March i, 1874. 
lOGO. Ada Louisa Benson, bom in West Bridgewater on April 30, 1876. 

1061. Cyrus Benson, bom in Bridgewater on May 21, 1880. 

1062. Nathan Benson, bom in Bridgewater on January 31, 1882. 

1063. Arthur Davis Benson, bom in Bridgewater on October 31, 1884. 

745. Eunice, daughter of Alfred 383 and Lydia (Stewart) 
Edson, bom in Stockbridge, Madison County, N. Y. ; married 
- — Gregg. 

Children : 

1064. Nathaniel Gregg. 

1065. Rebecca Gregg. 

1066. Solomon Gregg. 

1067. Alfonso Gregg. 

748. Henry Wells, son of Alfred 383 and Lydia (Stewart) 
Edson, bom in Stockbridge, Madison County, N. Y., about 1809 ; 
married Mehetabel Orcutt. He settled early in AVisconsin. 

Children : 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 557 

1068. John. 

1069. Silence. 

1070. Robert. 

1071. Alfred, born in 1844. 

Alfred Edson 1071 was killed in the battle of Shiloli, (^Pittsburg Landing), 
Tennessee, on April 6, 1S62. • 

749. Willard, son of Alfred ^St, and Lydia (Stewart) Edson, 
born in Stockbridge, Madison County, N. Y., on June 4, 1812; 
married, in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on June 10, 1832, 
Mary A. Ferguson, bom in Claverack, Columbia County, N. Y., 
on January 19, 18 10. She died in Munnsville, Madison County, 
N. Y., on Mareh 16, 1884, and he also there, on December 23, 
1886. 

Cliildren : 

1072. Lavinia. 

1073. Julia M. 

1074. Willard. 

1075. Elizabeth. 

1076. Ellen. 

1077. Fidelia. 

1078. Alfred. 

1079. OHve. 

1080. Samuel. 

1081. Sarah. 

Lavinia Edson 1072 died in 1877, and Elizabeth 1075 in Julv, 1S84. 

750. (31iver Stewart, son of Alfred 383 and Lydia (Stewart) 
Edson, boni in Stockbridge, Madison County, N. Y., on August 
I, 1813; married there, on October 27, 1841, Henrietta Alden, 
daughter of Gilbert and Rachel (Smith) Alden, bom in Stock- 
bridge, on February 15, 182 1. He died in Olathc, Johnson 
County, Kan., on August 11, 1897. 

Children : 

1082. Oliver Cromwell, born in Stockbridge, Madison County, X. Y., on July 

31. 1843. 
10S3. Montrose, born in Dane County, Wis., on September 13, 1845. 

1084. Azelia, born in Dane County, Wis., on Febnuiry 12, 1S47. 

1085. Angeline, born in Dane County, Wis., on April 4, 1849. 

1086. Emergene [Imogcne?], born in Dane County, Wis., on lanuarv 6, 
1S51. 

1087. Rowena, born in Dane County, Wis., on April 25,1 852. 

1088. William, born in Dane County, Wis., on February 7, 1854. 

1089. James Bassett, Imrn in Dane County, Wis., on September 5, 1855. 
Angeline Edson 1085 married, in Blairstown, Benton County, la., on June 

24, 1873, Milton Ltithcr Allison, born in LeRoy, Genesee County, N. Y.. on 
NovciTibcr 19, 1846. 

Oliver Stewart Edson moved with his familv frt)m Stock- 



558 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

bridge, Madison County, N. Y., in May, 1846, to Dane County, 
Wis., being one of the early settlers of the State. 

754. Samuel S., son of Alfred 383 and Lydia (Stewart) Edson, 
bom in Stockbridge, Madison County, New York; married 
Mary Green. 

Children : 

1090. Florentia. 

1091. Rosalie. 

1092. Daniel. 

Samuel S. Edson, of the town of Stockbridge, Madison Co., 
N. Y., conveyed a parcel of land, on January 21, 1846, to Jonas 
Bridge. 

756. Mary ("Polly"), daughter of Barnabas 384 and Anna 
(Walsworth) Edson, bom in the town of Augusta, Oneida 
County, N. Y., on September 29, 1800; married, on October 24, 
1 819, John W. Rosecrance. She died in New Milford, 111., on 
June 22, 1885. 

Children : 

1093. Charles Rosecrance, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., 

on January 9, 1823. 

1094. James E. Rosecrance, born in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, 

N. Y., on October 19, 1825. 

1095. Edwin Rosecrance, born on April 23, 1828. 

1096. Jane E. Rosecrance, bom in 1831. 

1097. Daniel Rosecrance, bom in 1838. 

Charles 1093 died on November 19, 1859; James E. 1094 married on Novem- 
ber 27, 1871, Fannie Rogers of New Milford, 111.; Edwin 1095 married Adelisa 
Norton, of Elba, New York; Jane E. 1096 died on May 5, 1838; and Daniel 
1097 on January 27, 1864. 

757. Gamahel, son of Barnabas 384 and Anna (Walsworth) 
Edson, bom in the town of Augusta, Oneida County, N. Y., in 
1802; married, on April 28, 1823, Hannah Boylan, bom in 
Stafford, Genesee County, N. Y., on November 30, 1807. She 
died in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on January 3, 1864, and he 
also there, on August 14, 1879. 

Children: 

1098. Elizabeth Ann, bom in Elba, Genesee County, N. Y., on July 4, 1827. 

1099. Alonzo James, M.D., bom in Elba, Genesee Covmty, N. Y., on April 7, 

1830. 

1100. Maryette Genette, born in Elba, Genesee County, N. Y., on March 22, 

1832. 

1101. Amanda Malvina, born in Elba, Genesee County, N. Y., on April 5, 1842. 
Amanda Malvina Edson iioi died in Genesee County, N. Y., on July 7, 
1842. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 559 

On November 8, i8^:;8, (jamalicl Edson 757 and Hannah, his 
wife, of the town of Charlotte, Chautauqua County, N. Y., for 
the sum of one hundred and seventy-five dollars, conveyed to 
Minor N. Bradley, of Elba, Genesee County, N. Y., one acre and 
eight rods of land in township twelve, first range, in the towns 
of Elba and Stafford. {Deeds, Book 58, p. 106, office of the Clerk 
of Genesee County, N. Y., in Batavia, N. Y.) 

ToQ. Lewis Morgan, son of Barnabas 384 and Anna (Wals- 
worth) Edson, bom in the town of Augusta, Oneida County, N. 
Y, on February 22, 1807 ; married, in Richville, Genesee County, 
N. Y., on March 28. 1832, Sarah ("Sally") Ames Flint, daughter 
of Elijah and Lydia (Jones) Flint, bom in the town of Pem- 
broke, Genesee County, N. Y., on September 8, 1814. He died 
in Akron, Erie County, N. Y., on February 28, 1859, and she in the 
the same place, on July 13, 1899. Their remains are entombed 
in the new cemetery in iVkron, N. Y. 

Children : 

1102. James La Fayette, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., 

on July 31, 1834. 

1103. Elizabeth, bom in the town of Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, N. Y., 

on January 31, 1839. 

1104. John Milton, born in the town of Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, 

N. Y., on February 22, 1842. 

1105. Dallas Morgan, bom in the town of Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, 

N. Y., on May 17, 1845. 
HOG. Carrie Adelaide, born in the town of Akron, Erie County, N. Y., on 
Octoljcr 16, 1856. 
Elizabeth 1103 inarried in Akron, N. Y., on October 18, 1859, Charles Milton 
Rich. John Milton 1104 served in the Civil War as an orderly sergeant in 

Company F, Regiment of New York State Volunteers. He died of 

malarial fever, on October 17, 1862, in Hampton Hospital, Fortress Monroe, 
Va. Dallas Morgan 11 05 enlisted, and went to Buffalo, N. Y., with the Home 
Guard, was taken sick, returned to Akron, and died suddenly, on February 12, 
1863, from an attack of erysipelas. 

Lewis Morgan Edson 759, the father, while x'isiting in the 
Southem States, was afflicted with yellow fever, which greatly 
impaired his health thereafter. As a consequence, he frequently 
changed the place of his residence in seeking a salubrious climate. 

760. Bamabas Ih'dl, son of Ijarnabas 384 and Anna (Wals- 
worth) Pvdson, l)()rn in llie tcnvn of Batavia, Genesee County, 
N. Y., on May 16, 181 1. married in Cliarlolk'.CliaulaiKiua County, 
N. Y., on December 28, 1837, Juha .Maria .\mes, l^orn in Han- 
cock, N. H., on September 13, 1813. He died at Cherry Creek, 



56o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Chautauqua ('ounty, N. Y., on February i8, 1892, and she also 
there on July 8, 1892. 
Children : 

1 107. Edwin Homer, borri in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on January 

29, 1839. 

1108. Lois Maria, born in Charlotte, Chatitauqua County, N. Y., on January 

30. 1843. 

1109. Anna Elizabeth, born in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on 

August 16, 1845. 

1110. Silas Hardy, born in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on July 7, 

1847- 

1111. Sarah Hardy, born in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on Septem- 

ber II, 1849. 

1112. Ellen Arminda, born in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, N. Y., in Feb- 

ruary, 1853. 
Anna Elizabeth Edson 1109 married, on March 13, 1867, Cyrus Gibson. 
She died in Michigan on June 8, 1891. Silas Hardy Edson 11 10 married, in 
1883, Carrie McCullough, and died in Charlotte, N. Y., on March 20, 1897. 
Sarah Hardy Edson mi married, on December 28, 1878, David McClaren. She 
died on May 8, 1880. Ellen Arminda Edson 11 12 died on March 20, 1857. 

761. Cyrenus Chapin, son of Barnabas 384 and Anna (Wals- 
worth) Edson, boni in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, 
N. Y., on December i, 1813; married, in Eagle, Allegany 
County, N. Y., on September 3, 1836, Huldah Nichols, bom on 
November 18, 181 7. He died on August i, 1S78. 

Children : 

1113. Ellen, born on January 10, 1839. 

1114. GeorgeW., born in Eagle, Allegany County, N. Y., on September 6, 1843. 

1115. Barnabas, born on September 13, 1846. 

1116. Myron, born on October 26, 1850. 

1117. Elbert, born on July 12, 1854. 

1118. Elva, bom on May 10, 1857. 

1119. Welley, born on March 20, 1863. 

Ellen Edson 11 13 died on October 2, 1885; and Myron 1116, on November 
14, 1863. 

762. Clarissa Ann, daughter of Barnabas 384 and Anna 
(Walsworth) Edson, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee 
County, N. Y., on February 8, 1816; married, in Charlotte, N. 
Y., on December 28, 1839, David H. Ames, bom in Hancock, 
N. H., on May 24, 181 7. She died in Charlotte, N. Y., on No- 
vember II, 1888, and he also there on November 23, 1891. 

Children : 

1120. Edson David Ames, bom in Charlotte, N. Y., on October 14, 1840. 

1 121. Homer A. Ames, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on July 3, 1842. 

1122. Adaline A. Ames, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on October 11, 1844. 

1123. Jonathan M. Ames, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on September i, 1846. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 561 

1124. Charles L. Ames, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on October 30, 1850. 

1125. Mary A. Ames, bom in Charlotte, N. Y., on January 6, 1857. 

763. Lucinda, daughter of Barnabas 384 and Anna (Wals- 
worth) Edson, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, 
N. Y., on August 29, 181 7; married (ist), in Charlotte, Chau- 
tauqua County, N. Y., on June i, 1838, WilHarn Devine. He 
died on June 14, 1851, and she married (2d), on November 25, 
1855, Daniel Drayton Bartholomew. He died on I\Iay 29, 1882, 
and she married (3d), on September 2, 1888, the Rev. William 
Spencer. She died in Sycamore, 111., on November 10, 1896. 

Children by first husband : 

1126. Sarah Arabelle Devine, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on August 29, 1839. 

1127. Emily Lucinda Devine, bom in Charlotte, N. Y., on Scptenibcr 30, 1841. 

1128. William La Fayette Devine, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on June 14, 1845. 

1129. Mary Arminda Devine, born on August 10, 1850. 

By second husband : 

1130. Adda Estelle Bartholomew, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on May 16, 1858. 
Mrs. Emily Lucinda Barnham 1127 lives at Akron, O. William La Fayette 

Devine 1 128 enlisted for the War for the Union, but died, before being called into 
action, at Pavilion, Genesee Covtnty, N. Y., on Aug\.ist 29, 1864. 

764. Arminda, daughter of Barnabas 384 and Anna (Wals- 
worth) Edson, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, 
N. Y., on February 4, 1821; married, in Bethany, Genesee 
County, N. Y., on January i, 1846, Augustine Somberger, bom 
on December 26, 1821. She died on August 19, 1877. 

Children : 

1131. Mary R. Somberger, born on June 26, 1847. 

1132. George H. Somberger, born on July 16, 1855. 
Mary R. Somberger 1131 died on December 8, 1866. 

766. John Gridley, son of Calvin 386 and Dolly (May) Edson, 
bom on December 5, 1830; married, on December 24, 1850, 
Sarah M. Taylor, bom on August 30, 1830. She died on Decem- 
ber 29, 1876. 

Children : 

1133. Calvin R., born on September 9, 1852. 

1134. Gridley G., born on October 11, 1854. 

1135. Franklin E., bom on August 19, 1858. 

1136. Lucy J., born on Augvist 6, i860. 

Calvin R Edson died on September 12, 1S79. Gridley G. Edson was drowned 
on June 12, 1867. Lucy J. Edson, died on April 12, 1900. 

777. Obed, son of Obed 395 and Fanny (Bigelow) Edson, 
bom in the town of Richfield, Otsego County, N. Y., on Septem- 
ber II, 1796; maiTied, in the town of Pomfrct, Chautauqua 

36 



562 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

County, February 3, 181 6, Sarah Scott, boni in Leverett, Frank- 
lin County, Mass., on October 6, 1799, and died at Villa Ridge, 
Pulaski County, 111., on May 9, 1877. He died, at the same 
place, September 9, 1877. 
Children : 

1137. Sophia, born in Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on April 10, 

1817. 

1138. Hiram Sinclair, bom in Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on 

December 13, 181 8. 

1139. Willis Bigelow, born in Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on 

November 16, 1820 

1140. Fanny, born in Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on October 16, 

1822. 

1141. Walter Scott, born in Sinclairville, Chautauqua Cotmty, N. Y., on 

September 10, 1824. 

1142. Nancy, bom in Sinclairville, Chatitauqvia County, N. Y., on April 24, 

1827. 

1143. John Milton, bom in Pine Grove, Warren County, Pa., on October 12, 

1832. 

1144. Joseph Hewes, bom in Pine Grove, Warren County, Pa., April 18, 1835. 

1145. Thos. H. Benton, bom in Pine Grove, Warren County, N. Y., on Sep- 

tember 7, 1837. 

1146. Martha Lavina, bom in Pine Grove, Warren County, Pa., on September 

26, 1840. 

Sophia 1 1 37 died in Aurora, Neb. She married, July 12, 1838, at Pine 
Grove, Henry G. Sargent. 

Hiram S. 1138 died, November 23, 1854, at McHenry, 111. He married, 
December 6, 1840, at Busti, N. Y., Mary Van Deusen. 

Willis B. 1139 inarried, at Busti, N. Y., Cordelia Curtis. 

Fanny 11 40 died August 21, 1898, at Keokuk, la. She married (ist), 
February 21, 1841, at Pine Grove, LeGrand F. Van Deusen, who died about 
1863, in Illinois She married (2d), February 12, 1867, at Fredonia, N. Y., 
Thomas W. Manchester. 

Walter S. 1141 died, October 2, 1882, at Kirkwood, Mo. He married, 
June 28, 1849, s-'t Pine Grove, Marcia A. Van Deusen. 

Nancy 1142 married. May 16, 1877, at Langworthy, la., Stephen C. Batchel- 
der. She was living in 1902. 

John M. 1 1 43 married Elizabeth M. Swails. 

Joseph H. 1144 died July 21, 1857, at Johnstown, Pa. 

Thomas H. B. 1145 died, August 21, 1851, at McHenry, 111. 

Martha L. 1146 died, February 14, 1847, at Pine Grove, Pa. 

Obed 777, the father, was removed, with his mother, and his 
stepfather. Major Sinclair, to Chautauqua County, N. Y., in 
1 8 10, and there he married. 

About 1827, stages were first run between Fredonia and 
Jamestown, and they were run by Obed Edson and Reuben 
Scott. The line was extended afterward, by Obed Edson, to 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



563 



Warren, Warren County, Pa. He removed to Warren County, 
and in 1836 he was appointed one of the associate judges of that 
county. In 1844, he was elected a member of the Assembly of 
Pennsylvania; and was commissioned a Justice of the Peace, 
March 8, 1845. He removed to Johnstown, Pa., where he was 
Director of the State improvements. He was assistant superin- 
tendent of the old Alleghany Portage railroad, which ran over 
the mountains and connected the east and west sections of the 
old Pennsylvania Canal. He removed with his family, in 1855, 
to northern Illinois, and thence to Pulaski County, of which 
county he was an associate justice. 

He was prominent in civil, political, and Masonic circles, and 
for many years a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. A 
newspaper sketch of him 
was as follows : " He was 
ever a firm, consistent 
observer of tnith and 
justice, and always con- 
tribtited liber a 1 1 y to 
charitable objects. For 
nearly sixty years he 
was a true and faithful 
member of the Masonic 
fraternity, and the large 
concourse of his broth- 
ers, who paid the last 
sad rites to his memory, 
gave evidence of the 
high esteem and regard 
in which he had lived 
and died. To his family 
and friends he leaves a 
record more lasting than 
time, more enduring than 

marble, simply this: 'An honest man.' In his pri\'alc Hfc he was 
kind, considerate, and hospitable, deeply feeling for the woes and 
afflictions of others. In his public character he was ever found 
true to the trusts and responsibilities imposed upon him, and 
fearless in the execution of every duty. Age sat with decent 



^^ 


k 


f 


\ 


JF-^i.^^ 


9r .^^^^I^U^^ ^^^^HH 



OBED EDSON. 



564 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

grace upon him, and worthily became his silver locks; he bore 
the marks of a life well spent, of virtue, truth, and honor fully 
tried, and of large and wide experience in all the relations he bore 
to his family, his kindred, and his friends. Of a truth it can be 
said to his survivors, and well may we exclaim : ' Weep, ye Fir 
trees, for the Cedar has fallen ! ' " 

778. John Milton, son of Obed 395 and Fann}^ (Bigelow) 
Edson, bom in the town of Hamilton (since known as Eaton), 
Madison County, N. Y., on July 30, 1801 ; married, in the town 
of Gerry, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on March 6, 1831, Hannah, 
daughter of Jonathan and Ursula (Church) Alverson, bom in 
the town of Hahfax, Windham County, Vt., on June 3, 1804. 
She died in the village of Sinclairville, town of Charlotte, 
Chautauqua County, N. Y., on November 22, 1878, and he in 
the same place, on August 21, 1885. 

Children : 

1147. Obed, born in Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on February 

18, 1832. 
1148 Fanny Ursula, born in Sinclairville, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on 

June 4, 1834. 

In the fall of 1810, John Milton Edson was taken, with the 
other members of the household, by his stepfather. Major 
Samuel Sinclair, from the town of Eaton, Madison County, N. Y., 
to the town of Pomfret, Chautauqua County, N. Y., where, at 
the site of the present village of Sinclairville, they arrived on the 
2 2d of October, and occupied the log house which had been 
erected for the use of the family. He and Fobes Johnson con- 
structed the first tannery in the town of Gerry, where they also 
built a grist-mill. On April 18, 1829, the town of Charlotte was 
taken from the town of Gerry. At the first town meeting held 
at Charlotte Center, on March 2, 1830, he was chosen for the 
office of justice of the peace. He served the town as a super- 
visor in 1852, '53, and '54. When he was a young man, it is 
said, great interest was shown in the formation of military com- 
panies and regiments. " In the regiment organized in the central 
and eastern portions of the county, he filled most of the regi- 
mental offices from lieutenant to colonel, which he received May 
22, 1830." Among the offices held by him at different times 
was that of United States Marshal. On April 17, 1843, he was 
appointed by his Excellency William C. Bouck, Governor of the 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 565 

State of New York, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and 
served until July i, 1847, when the court as then organized was 
abolished by the State Constitution of 1846. In politics he was 
always a Democrat. He was a member and an ofBcer of Sylvan 
Lodge 303 of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, in Sinclair- 
ville. He resided on a farm near the village. 

779. Fanny Aurora, daughter of Obed 395 and Fanny (Bige- 
low) Edson, born in the town of Hamilton (later Eaton), Madi- 
son County, N. Y., on October 27, 1803, married, in Sinclairville, 
Chautauqua County, N. Y., Horace Potter, on December 9, 1821, 
bom on February 26, 1798. 

Children : 

1149. Horace Sheldon Potter, born on September 21, 1822. 

1150. Obed Edson Potter, born on June 8, 1826. 

1151. George Obed Potter, born on March 26, 1828. 

1152. William Potter, born on March 7, 1832. 

1153. Charles Potter, born on September 6, 1834. 

1154. Aurora Fanny Potter, born on Jvily 5, 1836. 

1155. Viola Bryant Potter, bom in Warrcnville, Du Page County, 111., on 

December 6, 1843. 

They resided for a time at Kankakee, 111. 

78S. Darwin Noble, son of Doctor Wyllys 400 and Sally 
(Noble) Edson, bom in New Lisbon, Otsego County, N. Y., on 
March 25, 1809; married, in Unadilla, Otsego County, on June 
18, 1833, Hannah, daughter of Clark and Abigail Bliss, bom in 
Newport, R. I., on October 4, 1807. She died in Sidney, Dela- 
ware County, N. Y., on December 19, 1882, and he, in the vSame 
place, on June 18, 1884. 

Children : 

1156. Willis, born in Hunter, Greene County, N. Y., on April 25, 1834. 

1157. Clark, born on March 30, 1836. 

1158. Adelia Mary, } ^^^^.^^ -^^ ^j-^,^ Ulster Q.untv, N. Y., on lanuarv 7, 1 83S. 

1159. William Caley, S . . . . / o 

1 160. Sarah Maria, born in Olive, Ulster County, N. Y., on September 5. i 839. 

11 61. Rufus Palen, luirn in Olive, Ulster County, N. Y., on September 1 6, 1842. 

1162. Edward, born in Olive, Ulster County, N. Y., on September i, 1843. 

1163. Curtis Noble, l)orn in Olive, Ulster County, N. Y., on January 20, 1845. 

1164. William Darwin. l)orn in Wawarsing, Ulster County, N. Y., on October 

16,1 849. 

1165. Elizabeth Spooncr, born in Sidney, Delaware County, N. Y., on Novem- 

1 )er 27, 1852. 
Clark Edson 1157 died on July 18, 1836. Adelia Mary Edson 11 58, un- 
married, died in Duluth, Minn., on February 24, 1892. William Caley Edson 
1 1 59 died on Aiiril 12, 1838. Sarah Maria Edson 1160 died on December 5, 



566 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

1842. Edward Edson 1162 died on August 12, 1852. Curtis Noble Edson 1163 
died on March 11, 1847. Elizabeth Spooner Edson 1165 married Frank Higgins 
of Allegan, Mich. She died childless. 

Darwin Noble Edson 788 was a tanner, and won a number of 
premiums at the American Institute F'air, in New York City, for 
his exhibits of excellent leather. 

790. Wyllys Fiske, son of Dr. Wyllys 400 and Sally (No- 
ble) Edson, born in New Lisbon, Otsego County, N. Y. ; married, in 
Walton, Delaware County, N. Y., Hannah North. He died in 
Unadilla, Otsego County, in May, 187 1. 

Child: 

1166. Hannah Cornelia. 

Hannah Edson 1166, unmarried, resides in Walton, N. Y. 

Wyllys Fiske Edson 790 was a member of the firm of Edson 
& Hanford, wagon-makers. His will, made at Unadilla, on May 
2, 1871, was proved on May 6, 1871. 

791. Sally Maria, daughter of Dr. Wyllys 400 and Sally 
(Noble) Edson, bom in New Lisbon, Otsego County, N. Y. ; 
married Robert Savage Hughston. 

Children : 

1167. Guhan Robert Hughston. 

1168. Curtis Edson Hughston. 

1169. Isabelle Maule Hughston. 

793. William Bostwick, Rev. Dr., son of Dr. Wyllys 400 and 
Sally (Noble) Edson, bom in Unadilla, Otsego County, N. Y., on 
April 7, 1 824; 'married in New York, N. Y., on January 30, 1859, 
Isabella, daughter of James and Margaret (Tumbull) Maule, 
born in Berwick-on -Tweed, Scotland, on July 27, 1831. He 
died in Phelps, Ontario County, N. Y., on December 6, 1892. 
His widow still resides in Phelps, N. Y. Margaret sprang from 
the border clan of Turnbull. 

Children : ■ 

1170. William Noble, born in Forrestville Chautauqua County, N. Y., on 

May 6, 1862. 

1171. Mary J. Holmes, born in Brockport, Monroe County, N. Y., on July 6, 

1864. 

1172. Jtilia Isabella (Lillian), born in Brockport, Monroe County, N. Y., on 

March 14, 1866. 

1173. Herbert Wyllys, born in Brockport, Monroe County, N. Y., on January 

2, 1868. 
Mary J. Holmes 1171 married, on July 5, 1885, Eugene Charles Baeck; 
child: Eugene Herbert Wyllys, born on July 3, 1886. Julia Isabella 11 72 
("Lillian") married on January 28, 1898, Harry Sherwood Hamilton. No 
children. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



567 



The Rev. William Bostwick Edson, S.T.D., 793, having had 
a preparatory course of education at Oxford Academy, Chenango 
County, New York, entered Harvard College, from which he was 
graduated in 1848, and re- 
ceived the degree of Master 
of Arts, and there he became 
a member of the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society. After gradu- 
ating from the General Theo- 
logical Seminar y of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church 
in New York, N. Y., he was 
admitted, on July 2, 1854, into 
the order of Deacons of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, 
in Trinity Church, New York, 
liv the Right Rev. Jonathan 
Mayhew \\':dnwright. Pro- 
visional Bishop of the diocese 
of New York. In 1856, he 
w^as ordained a priest by the 
Right Rev. Samuel Allen 
McCoskry, Bishop of the dio- 
cese of Michigan. From 1854 
to 1856, he was deacon of, 

and from 1856 to i860, rector of, St. John's Protestant Epis- 
copal Church of Dunkirk, Chautauciua County, N. Y., and of 
St. Peter's, Forestville, in the same county; from i860 to 1866, 
rector of St. Luke's, Brockport. Monroe County, N. Y. ; and from 
1866 to 1884, rector of the joint i)arishes of Clifton Springs and 
Phelps, Ontario County, X. ^'. In 1884, the two parishes were 
divided, and the Rev. Dr. Ldson conlinucd rector of St. John's 
Protestant Episcopal Church in Phcl]is until his decease in 1892. 
The degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology was conferred upon 
him by Hobart College, Geneva, N. V., in 1885. In that year 
he was elected a member of the American Academy of Political 
and Social Science of Philadclpliia, Pa. .\s I'mfessor of Greek, 
Hebrew, and Sacred Theology, he was associated with I lie De- 
lancey Divinity School in Cieneva, X. \'., fn>m 1883. 




REV. WILLIAM BOSTWICK EDSON. S.T.D. 



568 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

794. Virgil James, son of Lewis 402 and Orilla (Mead) Edson, 
bom in Danbury, Conn., on January 9, 1800; married — ■ — •. 
He died at Lake Hill, on October 22, 1878, aged seventy-eight 
years nine months and thirteen days. 

Children : 

117-4. Lewis Milton, born October 9, 1821. 

1175. Eliza Catharine, born October 15, 1822. 

1176. Lewis Gilver, born July 15, 1824. 

1177. Admiral Warren, born June 24, 1826. 

1178. Jacob Peter, bom May 23, 1828. 

1179. Albert Clinton, born September 13, 1830. 

1180. John Wesley, born July 7, 1834. 

Lewis Milton 1174 died on December 18, 1821. Eliza C. 1175 married 

Harder, and lived in Cairo, Greene County, N. Y., and died in December, 1868. 
Lewis Gilver 1 1 76 died on April 24, 1 849. Admiral Warren 1 1 77 died on Decem- 
ber 24, 1844. Jacob Peter 1 1 78 died on December 15, 1849. Albert Clinton 1179 
died on January 11, 1850. 

799. Marmont Bryan, son of William Jarvis 405 and Polly 
(Fairchild) Edson, bom at Fly Creek, Otsego County, N. Y., on 
April 12, 1813; married in Oswego, Oswego County, N. Y., on 
October 7, 1841, by the Rev. John McCarty of Christ Protestant 
Episcopal Church, Margaret Barbara, daughter of Jacob Nicholas 
and Gertrude (Ring) Bonesteel,' bom at Clermont, Columbia 
County, N. Y., on March 27, 1819. He died at Hotel Lincoln, 



^ THE BONESTEEL FAMILY. 

Nicholas Bonesteel, with his wife, Anna Margretha Kuhns, and several 
children, settled in that part of Duchess County, N. Y., now known as the 
.town of Red Hook. The name of Nicholas Bonesteel appears on a list of the 
taxable inhabitants of the North Ward of the county in 1723, where, it is said, 
he held by life-leave .a farm, bounded northerly by the road leading to Barry- 
town, easterly by the post road, southerly by the Benner farm, and westerly 
b}^ the Hans Waldorph farm. A part of the site of the village of Red Hook is 
on the eastern section of the farm. 

Among the number of their descendants were: Nicholas, son of Philip and 
Elizabeth (Hagedorn) Bonesteel, born in Duchess County, N. Y.. on November 
21, 1753; married Margaret Staats, and settled on a farm lying along the post 
road, between the one hundred and second and one hundred and third mile- 
stones; the homestead being owned, in 1 881, by Samuel Ten Broeck. 

Children : 

Philip Nicholas Bonesteel, John Nicholas Bonesteel, Jacob Nicholas Bone- 
steel, born in Duchess County, N. Y., on June i, 1794; and Henry Nicholas 
Bonesteel. 

Philip Nicholas Bonesteel married Alida Van Bramer, and had three children : 
Virgil D., Margaret, and Catharine Harmena. He was a merchant, magistrate, 
and postmaster in the village of Red Hook for many years; was colonel of a 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 569 

comer of Broadway and 5 2d Street, New York, N. Y., on April 
2, 1892. 

Children: 

1181. Jarvis Bonesteel, born in Janesville, Rock County, Wisconsin Territory, 

on April 30, 1845. 

1182. Henry Augustus, bom in Janesville, Rock County, Wisconsin Territory, 

on April g, 1847. 

1183. Mary Gertrude, born in Janesville, Rock County, Wisconsin, on Novem- 

ber I 7, 1849. 

1184. Tracy John, bom in Decatur, Green Cotmty, Wiscon.sin, on May 26, 

1854. 

1185. Fanny Fairchild, bom in Prairie du Chien, Crawford County, Wis., on 

April 16, 1859. 
Henry Augustus Edson 1182 died in Brooklyn, N. Y., on September 9, 1870, 
and Tracy John Edson 1184, in Decatur, Green County, Wisconsin, on September 
4, 1855. Fanny Fairchild Edson 1185 married, in Brooklyn, N. Y., on February 
7, 1884, Edward Maxwell Reid. She died on December 13, 1885. Their remains 
are entombed in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

807. Mary, daughter of John 413 and Mary (Bass) Edson. 
bom in Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on January 21, 
1829; married there, on September 7, 1853, Oliver Edwards 
Cushing, son of Stephen and Ethelinda (Edwards) Cushing, 
bom in Lowell, Middlesex County, Mass., on March 12, 1829. 
He died there, on January 17, 1890 ; and the widow is living there. 

Children : 

1186. Mary Cushing, bom in Lowell, Mass., on Januarj^ i, 1855. 

1187. Margaret D. Cushing, born in Lowell, Mass., on July 23, 1857. 

1188. Angeline Cushing, born in Lowell, Mass., on August 5, i860. 



regiment of cavalry, and for a number of years was a trustee of Hartwick Sem- 
inary, in Otsego County, N. Y. 

John Nicholas Bonesteel married Anna Maria Elseffer, and had three chil- 
dren: David Nicholas, Margaret E., and Catharine A 

Jacob Nicholas Bonesteel, bom in Duchess County, N. V., on June 1, 1794, 
married, in Rhinebeck, Duchess County, on January 28, 1816, Gertrude, 
daughter of Captain Jacob Ring, of Duchess Covmty, born there on February 
9, 1797. She died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Territoiy, on November 25, 1843, 
and he also there on June 26, 1844. Children: William J.; Margaret Barbara, 
bom at Clermont, Columbia County, N. Y., on March 27, 1819, and married, in 
Oswego, Oswego County, N. Y., on October 7, 1841, Marmont Bryan, son of 
William Jarvis and Polly (Fairchild) Edson, born at Fly Creek, Otsego County, 
N. Y., on April 12, 181 3; John N., Augustus D.; Mary Gertrude; Henry E.; 
Fanny A. ; and Jacob Peter. 

Henry Nicholas Bonesteel married Helen Miller and had five children: Philij) 
H., Peter, Delia Eliza (wife of Jacob W. ElsetYer, Esq.), Catharine Augusta, 
(widow of John Christesc, of Minneapolis, Minn.), and Helen Louisa (wife of 
Rensselaer Platner, M.I)., of ClermcMit, N. Y.) 



570 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Mary 1186 married, in Lowell, Mass., on October 2, 187S, Martin Ellsworth 
Hall, then a lieutenant in the United States Navy, now a commander, retired 
on account of ill health. Children: Margaret Woodburn, born in Pensacola, 
Fla., on December 22, 1879; Annie Louise, bom also there on January 15, 1S81 ; 
Wolcott Ellsworth, born in Newport, Rhode Island, on January 3, 1884; and 
Olive Gushing, born also there, on May 29, 1901. Margaret D. 1187 married in 
Lowell, Mass., on April 4, 1883, Edward T. Abbott, who died there on Sep- 
tember 14, 1895. Children: Daisy Odiorne, born in Lowell, Mass., on January 
13, 18S5; Elizabeth Grace, born also there on May 24, 1887; and Gertrude Gush- 
ing, also there, on February 17, 1889. 

Oliver Edwards Gushing 807 was graduated at Exeter Aca- 
demy, in Andover, Mass., in 1848; studied civil engineering and 
successfully pursued it for a time as a profession ; he engaged in 
gas engineering, in which he -became eminent. He was one of 
the founders of the New England Association of Gas Engineers 
and the American Gas Light Association. From i860, to his 
decease in 1890, he was the agent of the Lowell Gas Light Com- 
pany. 

809. Samuel (Rev.), son of John 413 and Mary (Bass) Edson, 
bom in the town of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on 
March 28, 1835; married, in Delphi, Ind., on September 19, 
1865, Mary Miranda, daughter of John and Susan (Lyon) Burr, 
born there on July 31, 1844. She died in Shrewsbury Parish, 
Kent County, Md., on February 13, 1898. 

Children : 

1189. Mira Burr, born in Galena, 111., on August 27, 1866. 

1190 

1191 

1192 

1193 

1194 

1195 

1196 



John LeBeeter, born in Galena, 111., on November 17, 1867. 

Samuel, born in Galena, 111. 

Theodore, born in Galena, 111. 

William, born in Galena, 111. 

Susan, born in Navesink, New Jersey, on April 28, 1880. 

HerViert Gladstone, born in Navesink, N. J., on February 2, 1882. 

Mary, born in Newton, N. J., on April 13, 1888. 
Mira Burr 1189 a graduate of St. Mary's Hall, Burlington, N. J., is a 
teacher in the Department of Design, at School of Industrial Art, at Trenton, 
N.J. 

The Rev. Samuel Edson was graduated from Trinity College, 
Hartford, Conn., in 1855. In 1856, he went to Milwaukee, Wis., 
studied law, and was admitted to the bar. In i860, he entered 
the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in New York, N. Y., and two years later was ordained a 
priest by the Right Rev. George Upfold, Bishop of Indiana. His 
first charge was in Crawfordsville, Ind. . He was a trustee of 
Griswold College, at Davenport, Iowa. At present time he is 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 571 

rector of Shrewsbury Parish, Locust Grove, Kent County, Md., 
and St. Andrew's Parish, Galena, Kent County, Md. 

Sn. Theodore, son of John 413 and Mary (Bass) Edson, 
bom in Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on March 23, 
1839; married, in Rock Island, 111., on June 17, 1869, Susan M., 
daughter of Charles and Lucy (Duke) Buford, born in Scott 
County, Ky., on July 20, 1846. He died in Rock Island, 111., on 
November 16, 1870. 

Child : 

1197. Agatha Btiford, born at West Point, N. Y., on June 4, 1870. 

Agatha Buford Edson 1197 married, in Rock Island, on December 14, 1S93, 
Lieutenant Lloyd H. Chandler, U. S. N. Child; Theodore. 

The military history of Major Theodore Edson 811 of the 
United States Army begins with his cadetship at the United 
States Military Academy, at West Point, N. Y., from July i, 
1855, to July I, i860. U])on his graduation, he was promoted 
to the position of Brevet Second Lieutenant of Ordnance, July, 
i860. Served as Assistant Ordnance Officer, at Watertown, 
Mass., from October i8, i860; Second Lieutenant of Ordnance, 
from April 22, 1 861, to November 17, 186 1. As First Lieutenant 
of Ordnance, in command of Louisville Ordnance Depot, 
Kentucky, from November 21, 1861, to October 24, 1862; 
as Chief of Ordnance in Major-General Rosecrans's Tennessee 
campaign, from October 24, 1862, to January 28, 1863, being 
present at the battle of Stone River, on December 31, 1862; 
made a Brevet Captain on December 31, 1862, for gallant and 
meritorious services at the battle of Stone River, Tennessee. In 
command of Cincinnati Ordnance Depot, from February i to 
July, 1863; on foundry duty, at Cold Spring, N. Y., from July 
to October, 1863; made Captain of Ordnance on March 3, 1863; 
in command of Fortress Monroe Arsenal, Virginia, from October 
21, 1863, to June 14, 1865, being Chief of Ordnance Department 
of Virginia and North Carolina from January i, 1864, to June 16, 
1865. Made Brevet Major, on March 13, 1865, for faithful and 
meritorious services in the Ordnance Department. As In- 
spector of Powder, fR)m June 14, 1865, to October 20, 1866; as 
Assistant Ordnance Officer at Allegheny .Vrsenal, Pa., from Oc- 
tober 20, 1866, to June 4, 1867; and at Rock Island Arsenal, 111., 
from June 4, 1867, to July 7, 1869. Made Major of ( )nlnance on 
December 15, 1867. In command of Columbus Arsenal, from 



572 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

July 7, 1869, to August i, 1869; at West Point, N. Y., as a mem- 
ber of the Academic Board, and Instructor of Ordnance and 
Gunnery, from August i, 1869. While visiting, with his wife and 
daughter, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Charles Buford, in Rock Island, 
111., he died of peritonitis, on November 16, 1870. He was 
buried there with military honors. 

812. Josiah, son of John 413 and Mary (Bass) Edson, bom in 
the towii of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Mass., on September 
17, 1841 ; married, on December 16, 1901, Rosabelle S. Rider. 
He is in business in Chicago. 

815. George F., son of Charles P. 426 and Amy Caroline (Fox) 
Edson, bom in Brimfield, Portage County, Ohio, on July 28, 
1829; married, in Van Wert, Ohio, on March 29, 1857, Elizabeth, 
daughter of John and Phoebe (Dull) Slater, bom on F'ebruary 
7, 1840, in Van Wert, Ohio. He died in Van Wert, on December 
5, 1893, in his sixty-third year, and she also there on January 7, 
1898, in her fifty-eighth year. Their remains were interred in 
Woodland Cemetery, in Van Wert. 

Children : 

1198. Frank Perkins, bom in Van Wert, O., on April 22, 1858. 

1199. Emma Caroline, born in Van Wert, O., on March 19, i860. 

Emma Caroline Edson 1199 died in Van Wert on April 13, 1899, and her 
body was buried in Woodland Cemetery. 

825. Clarissa, daughter of Ophir 430 and Clarissa (Shurtlilf) 
Edson, bom in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., on August 11, 
1 81 3; married there, on January i, 1835, Luke, son of Phineas 
and Jerusha (Marsh) White, bom in Springfield, Vt., on May 24, 
1800. She died in Rockingham, Windham County, Vt., on 
March 26, 1849. He died on July 30, 1873. 

Children : 

1200. Clarissa Ellen White. 

1201. Mary Melissa White. 

1202. Albert Edson White, bom on May 24, 1841. 

1203. Sarah E. White. 

Albert Edson White 1202, died on October 12, 1873. 

Luke White 825 removed to Rockingham, Vt., with his father 
when about thirteen years of age, living on a farm formerly 
owned by his grandfather, Josiah White. After his marriage he 
and his brother William bought it from their father, and lived in 
the brick house now standing on the place. 

826. Othniel Williams, son of Ophir 430 and Soviah (Wil- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 573 

liams) Edson, bom in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., on January 
7, 1 81 8, married fist), in Rockingham, Windham County, Vt.. 
on September 6, 1842, Martha Adehne, daughter of Ehas and 
Susan (Lane) Pulsipher, bom in Rockingham. She died in 
Troy, Rensselaer County, N. Y., on May 28, 1859, and her re- 
mains were interred in Albany Rural Cemetery. He married 
(2d) in Troy, N. Y., on October 2, i860, Elizabeth L., daughter of 
George Andrews. He died in Albany, N. Y., on March 5, 1861. 
Children by first wife : 

1204. Catharine Zada, born in Troy, N. Y., on July 17, 1843. 

1205. Starks, born in Chester, Vt., on August 15, 1848. 

Child by second wife : 

1206. Florence, born in Troy, N. Y., on August 29, 1861. 

Catharine Zada 1204 married, in New York, N. Y., on April ig, 1871, 
Francis A., son of James W. and Abby (Ferris) Davis, of Boston, Mass. He 
died in Boston, in 1896, and she in Newton, Mass., on January 29, i8g8, child- 
less. Their remains are entombed in Forest Hill Cemetery, Boston, Mass. 
Starks 1205 married at Saxtons River, town of Rockingham, Windham County, 
Vt., on May 18, 1870, Nellie Sophia, daughter of Stephen and Abbie (Russell) 
Childs. They were childless. Florence 1206 died in childhood, and was buried 
in Albany Rural Cemetery. 

828. Cyrus, son of Ophir 430 and vSoviah (Williams) Edson, 
bom in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., on October 14, 1820, mar- 
ried, in Troy, Rensselaer County, N. Y., on October 22, 1846, 
Martha Davidson Nelson, daughter of John D. and Anna Maria 
(Orr) Nelson. He died in Albany, N. Y., on May 15, 1856, and 
was buried in Albany Rural Cemetery. 

Children : 

1207. Anna, born in Albany, N. Y., on December 17, 1847. 

1208. John Tracey, born in Albany, N. Y.. on February 15, 1850. 

1209. Julia Orr, born in Albany, N. Y., on August 29, 1851. 

Anna 1207 married, in St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church, in Albany, 
N. Y., on April 12, 1871, John L., son of Admiral John L. and Olivia Worden. 
She died in Albany, N. Y., on Febrtiarj^ 5, 1872, and was buried in Albany 
Rural Cemetery. He died on May 4. 1873. No offspring. 

830. Alexander, son of Ophir 430 and Soviah (Williams) 
Edson, born in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., on July 31, 1827, 
married, in Sandlake, Rensselaer County, N. Y., on September 
17, 1850, Elizabeth, daughter of Charles and Fanny Frothingham. 
He died in New York, N. Y., on January 23, 1868, and was buried 
in Albany Rural Cemetery. She died in New York, N. Y., on 
February 23, 1901, and was buried in RiclinKmd I fill Ceme- 
tery, L. I. 



574 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Children : 

1210. Chatmcey Crapo, born in New York, N. Y., on July 25, 1851. 

1211. Alexander, born in New York, N. Y., on February 19, 1853. 

1212. Fanny Frothinghani, born in New York, N. Y., on August 29, 1861. 
Alexander 121 1 married, in New York, N. Y., on September 12, 1882, Abbie 

Marie, daughter of John and Fanny (Marston) Maccaffil. No children. 

Alexander Edson 830, the father, a resident of New York, 
N. Y., from 1855 to 1868, made his will on October 3, 1867, 
which was probated on June 4, 1868. 

831. Melinda Dorcas, daughter of Ophir 430 and Soviah (Wil- 
liams) Edson, bom in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., on April 
10, 1829, married there, in 1850, Hiram E., son of Mark W. 
Adams, of Rockingham, Vt. She died in Burlington, Vt. 

Children : 

1213. Frank E. Adams. 

1214. Mark W. Adams. 

1215. Edson Adams. 

832. Franklin, son of Ophir 430 and Soviah (Williams) Ed- 
son, bom in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., on April 5, 1832, 
married, in St. Peter's Church, Albany, N. Y., by the Rev. — — ■ 
Pitkin, D.D., on November 19, 1856, Fanny Cameron Wood, 
daughter of Benjamin Howland and Helen Ann (Townsend) 
Wood, bom in Bath, Steuben County, N. Y., on March 21, 1835. 
She died at Fordham Heights, New York City, N. Y., on June i, 
1893, and her remains were interred in Albany Rural Cemetery. 
He was Mayor of New York City, by election in November, 1882. 

Children : 

1216. Cyrus, born in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on September 8, 1857. 

1217. Franklin, bom in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on September 20, 

1859. 

1218. David Orr, bom in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on February 17, 1862 . 

1219. Henry Townsend, born in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on August 13, 

1864. 

1220. Edith, born in Fordham Heights, N. Y., on October 17, 1870. 

1221. Robert Stewart, bom in Fordham Heights, N. Y., on February 5, 1873. 

1222. Ethel Townsend, born in Fordham Heights, N. Y., on August 26, 1877. 
Ethel Townsend Edson 1222 married, in St. Bartholemew's Protestant 

Episcopal Church, New York, N. Y., on June 5, 1902, Arthur Hoffman, son 
of Charles Holmes and Amelia Chesterman (Henry) Van Brunt, born in New 
York, N. Y., on June 23, 1865 

834. Abigail, daughter of Ophir 430 and Soviah (Williams) 
Edson, bom in Rockingham, Windham County, Vt., on Novem- 
ber 23, 1836, married, in Chester, Windsor County, Vt., on No- 
vember 28, i860, John H. Coon. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 575 

Children : 

1223. Edson Coon, born in Troy, Rensselaer County, N. Y., on December 9, 

1863. 

1224. John H. Coon, born in Troy, Rensselaer County, N. Y., on December 31 , 

1866. 

1225. Albert Edson Coon, bom in Troy, Rensselaer County, N. Y., on October 

29, 1869. 

1226. George Othniel Coon, born in Brooklyn, Kings County, N. Y., on Decem- 

ber 1 , 1 87 1. 

1227. Julia Abigail Coon, born in Brooklyn, Kings County, N. Y., on July 14, 

1874"^ 
Edson Coon 1223 died in Troy, N. Y., on January 31, 1866. 

838. Hannah Whitman, daughter of Ezra 460 and AngeUna 
(Washburn) Edson, bom in Mendon, Rutland County, Vt., on 
July 26, 1845, married, on October g, 1866, Marquis Edson Tenney. 

Children : 

1228. Angie Tryphena Tenney, born in Pittsfield, Vt., on June 22, 1870. 

1229. Abbie Elisabeth Tenney, bom in Pittsfield, Vt., on October 29, 1876. 

840. Charles Edwin, son of Galen Kingman 461 and Lucy 
(Hudson) Edson, bom in Rutland, Rutland County, Vt., on 
September 6, 1839, married, in Le Roy, Genesee County, N. Y., 
on September 20, 1864, Martha Eliza, daughter of Ward and 
Eliza (Trimbell) Beckley, bom in Bergen, Genesee County, N. Y., 
on October 26, 1840. 

Children : 

1230. Archie Galen, born in Stafiford, Genesee County, N. Y., on December 21 , 

1865. 

1231. Frank Clayton, born in Le Roy, Genesee Covmty, N. Y.,on August 26, 

1868. 

1232. Charles Leland, born in Le Roy, Genesee County, N. Y., on April 18, 1870. 

1233. Hattie Lucy, born in Blue Rapids, Kan., on April 14, 1872. 

Charles Edwin Edson 840 went with his parents to Le Roy, 
town of Le Roy, Genesee County, N. Y., in 1842, where he re- 
ceived a common school education. In 1870, with a colony of 
one hundred people, he went to Blue Rapids, Kan., where he 
lived five years, and then retumed to Le Roy. 

844. Alondo B., son of Otis Hudson 462 and Ann (Berrv) 
Edson, bom in llie town of Whitehall, Washington County, N. 
Y., on December 31, 1844, married (ist), A])ril 1 1, 1870. Marv E. 
Westcott of Pittsford, Rutland County, Vt. She died on May 6, 
1881. He married (2d), on May 15, 1883, Nellie, daughter of 
Alvin and Sarah fBucklin) Lord, born in the town of ^^ount 
Holly, Rutland County, \'t., on July 3, 1856. 



576 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Child by first wife : 

1234. Harry L., born on August 5, 1871. 

Children by second wife : 

1235. Walter H., born in Rutland, Rutland County, Vt., on May 21, 1885. 

1236. Lucia E., born in Rutland, Rutland County, Vt., on May 19, 1887. 

1237. Otis A., born in Rutland, Rutland County, Vt., on May 7, 1890. 

The family reside at No. 50 Church Street, Rutland, Vt. 
850. Barzillai, son of Nehemiah Shaw 481 and Pamel Ed- 
son, bom on August 20, 1818, married Ann •. 

Children : 

1238. Eugene. 

1239. Henry. 

1240. Charles. 

(3n June 13, 1878, Barzillai Edson 850 of the town of Oneonta, 
Otsego County, N. Y., made his will at his homestead on Ford 
Avenue, in the village of Oneonta, which was proved on Septem- 
ber ig, 1879. All the above children are named in the will; also 
William B., his grandson, son of Eugene 1238. 

862. Emily, daughter of David 486 and Clintha or Mehetabel 
Edson, married, on April 6, 1859, Edward E. Bennett of North 
Bridgewater. He had married (ist) Nabby Stimpson, who died 
on July 14, 1858. 

Child of Emily: 

1241. Edward Bennett, born in North Bridgewater on April 4, 1862. 

898. Josiah, son of Barnabas 514 and Elizabeth (Gumey) 
Edson, bom on March 27, 1822, married, on May i, 1844, El- 
virah, daughter of Gibbons Sharp of Middleborough. 

Children : 

1242. Angeline Augusta, bom on September 22, 1845. 

1243. Walter Scott, born on May 21, 1848. 

1244. Josiah Bradford, bom on March i, 1862. 

924. Hiram, son of Calvin 545 and Martha (Dunbar) Edson, 
bom in Oakham, Mass., on November 27, 1804, married, on 
August II, 1 83 1, Chloe Moulton of Spencer, bom on November 
26, 1809. He died in North Brookfield, on July 28, 1882. 

Children : 

1245. Emily Dunbar, born in North Brookfield on May 12, 1839. 

1246. Emily Maria, bom in North Brookfield on October 23, 1842. 

1247. Mary Ann Susan, bom in North Brookfield on July 2, 1845. 

1248. Chloe Ellen, born in North Brookfield on June 25, 1848. 

Emily Dunbar Edson 1245 died in July, 1840; Mary Ann Susan 1247, on 
February 14, 1846; and Chloe Ellen 1248 on May 13, 1854. 

Hiram Edson 924 was a Representative in the Massachusetts 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 577 

Legislature from North Brookfiold, in 1844, and a selectman of 
the place. 

925. Silas Dunbar, son of Calvin 545 and Alarllia (Dunbar) 
Edson, born in Oakham, Mass., on March 3, 1807, married, on 
November 28, 1833, Sarah Pancoast Saunders of Washington, 
D.C. He died in Philadelphia, on October 25, 1855. 

Children : 

1249. William Dunbar, born in Philadelphia, Pa., on Se])teml)t-r 24, 1834. 

1250. Mary Savinders, born in Philadelphia, Pa., on September 4, 1840. 
Mary Saunders Ed.son 1250 married on February 14, 1865, Arthur Miller of 

Philadelphia, Pa., and died on February 22, 1867. 

928. Lavinia, daughter of Calvin 545 and ]\Iartha (Dunbar) 
Edson, bom in North Brookfield, Mass., on April 3, 181 6, married, 
on April 7, 1835, Dwight Smith of Hadley, Mass., bom on No- 
vember 9, 181 1, and died at Key West, Florida, on February 5, 
1868. 

Children : 

1251. William D. Smith, born in Hadley, Mass., on February i, 1837. 

1252. Ellen Virginia Smith, born in Hadley, Mass , on January 4, 183S. 

1253. Laura D. Smith, born in Hadley, Mass., on September 3, 1840. 

1254. Mary A. W. Smith, born in Hadley, Mass., on July i, 1843. 

1255. Henry D. Smith, born in Somerville, Mass., on August 6, 1849. 

1256. Frederic B. Smith, born in Somerville, Mass., on March 6, 1855. 

1257. Charles H. Smith, born in Somerville, Mass., on April 2, 1856. 

929. William Fiske, son of Calvin 545 and Martha (Dunbar) 
Edson, born in North Brookfield, Mass., on December 4, 1818, 
maiTied, on July 2, 185 1, Susan H., daughter of Doctor Gad 
Hitchcock of Yarmouth, Me., and. great-great-granddaughter of 
General Benjamin Lincoln of Hingham, Mass. 

Children : 

1258. Alfred Herbert, bom in North Brookfield, Mass., on April 4. 1852. 

1259. Charles Henry, born in North Brookfield, Mass., on October 28, 1856. 

1260. Mary Lincoln, Ijorn in North Brookfield, Mass., on Septemlier 19, 1859. 

9,37. Seth, son of (ialen 569 and Mary Ann ((Jlivcr) Edson, 
bom on April 18, 1828, married Caroline Augusta Blake of Dor- 
chester. 

Children : 

1261. Samtiel Blake, born on January 30, 1854. 

1262. Lcona Augusfa, born on April 12, 1855. 

1263. Seth Blake, born on March 30, 1857. 

1264. George Temple, born on May 23, 1859. 

1265. Mary Cai^oline, born on l)eceml)er 18, i8fio. 

1266. Ida Marian, Imrn on November 28, 1S63. 
37 



578 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Samuel Blake 1261 died on August 23, 1854; George Temple 1264, on 
August 23, 1 86 1. 

Seth Edson 937, the father, in the Civil War enhsted in com- 
pany F, in the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, 
commanded by Colonel Fletcher Webster. 

947. Hiram Allen, son of Amasa 573 and Mary (Edson) Ed- 
son, bom on Februar}^ 8, 1839, married, on June 26, 1858, Sarah 
Jane, daughter of Elias Cook of Guiseborough, N. S. 

Child : 

1267. Anna Cordelia, born on April i, 1859. 

951. Benjamin (M.D.), son of Freeman Willard 598 and 
Sally (Sheldon) Edson, bom in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y.. on 
May 26, 1831, married in Milford, N. Y., on August 18, 1870, 
Mary, daughter of Simeon and Harriet (Haines) Waters, born in 
Milford, N. Y. 

Child: 

1268. Mary Grace, born in Brooklyn, N. Y., on July 9, 1871. 

Mary Grace Edson 1268 married in Brooklyn, N. Y., on October 19, 1898, 
William R., son of Robert C. and Jean (Scrimgeour) Scrimgeour, bom in Brook- 
lyn, on August 12, 1864. Child: Dorothy, born in Brooklyn, N. Y., on Novem- 
ber 14, 1900. 

Benjamin Edson, M.D., 951, of 83 St. Mark's Avenue, Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., was graduated at the New York University in 1873, 
and has since been practising medicine, giving special attention 
to the diseases of children, whereby he has been entitled a "child 
specialist." He has been a frequent contributor to medical 
journals, and has assisted in the compilation of several valuable 
medical works. 

952. Henry Sheldon (M.D.), son of Freeman Willard 598 and 
Sarah (Sheldon) Edson, born in Otego, Otsego County, N. Y., on 
April 9, 1835, married, in Binghamton, Broome County, N. Y., 
on April 19, 1892, Alta Nettie, daughter of James and Susan 
(Wait) Terry, born in Otego, Otsego Cotmty, N. Y., on January 
12, 1870. 

Children : 

1269. Sarah Ella, born in Cortland, Cortland County, N. Y., on November 2, 

1893. 

1270. Clara Belle, born in Cortland, Cortland County, N. Y., on September 9, 

1896. 

1271. Anna Laura, born in Cortland, Cortland County, N. Y., on December 10, 

1 90 1. 

Henry Sheldon Edson, M.D., 952, was graduated at the Al- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 579 

bany Medical College, in February, 1877, and has practised medi- 
cine in Cortland, Cortland County, N. Y., since 1879. 

964. Isaac C. (M.D.), son of Harley 604 and Phoebe (Heath) 
Edson, bom in the town of Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on 
July 3, 1823, married there (ist), on Se])tember 25, 1841, Lydia 
A., daughter of Piatt and Mary ("Polly") Crofut, born in Coles- 
ville, Broome County, N. Y., on April 15, 1822. She died in 
Cincinnatus, Cortland County, N. Y., on December i, 1845. He 
married (2d), in Colesville, on October 20, 185 1, Sarah, daughter 
of Gurdon and Laura Knowlton, bom there on June 17, 1829. 

Children by first wife : 

1272. Charles C, bom in Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on Jvme 17, 1843. 

1273. Ann Lucia, bom in Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on. June 15, 1845. 

Child by second wife : 

1274. Ella, born in Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., on January 16, 1861. 
Ella Edson 1274 died in Windsor, on February 14, 1879. 

When nineteen years old, Isaac C. Edson 964 began the study 
of medicine, and entered upon his professional career in Cincin- 
natus, Cortland County, N. Y., in 1845, and, in 1846, moved to 
West Colesville, Broome County, N. Y., and, in i860, to Windsor, 
Broome County, where he still practices his profession. In 1861, 
he was graduated at the Pennsylvania Medical College, in Phila- 
delphia, Pa., and, in 1867, at the Albany Medical College, in 
Albany, N. Y. He also attended a course of lectures at the New 
York Polyclinic College. He has been from 1866 a member of 
the Broome County Medical Society, and, in 1870-71, was the 
president of it. He represented the town of Windsor for two 
years in the Board of Supervisors of Broome County, and was 
coroner for two years. In 1886 and 1887, he was a member of 
the Assembly of the State of New York. Since 186 1 he has been 
a member of Windsor Lodge No. 442 of Ancient Free and Ac- 
cepted Masons. 

966. Susan, daughter of Timothy 645 and Mary (Downer) 
Edson, bom in Bethel, Windsor County, Vt., <in July 15, 1799, 
married (1st) in Randoli)h, Orange County, \'t., on October 3, 
1822, Lund, son of James and Elizabeth (Fund) Tarbox. bom 
there on December ;i,i, 1791). lie died in I\an(l<)l]>li, <n\ August 
23, 1841, and his widow married (2d), on August 3, 1845, Doctor 
Julius Yemans Dewey, son of Captain Simeon and I'rudence 
(Yemans) Dewey, bom in Berlin, Washington Count\-, Vt., on 



58o EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

August 2 2, 1 80 1, who had first wedded, on June q, 1825, Marv 
Perrin, by whom he had Charles, bom in MontpeHer, ^^t., on 
March 27, 1826. His second marriage was without issue. Susan 
(Edson) Tarbox Dewey died in Montpeher, on September 11, 

1854. Dr. JuHus Yemans Dewey married (3d), on March 9, 

1855, Susan E. G. Lilley. He died at Montpeher, Yt., May 29, 
1877. 

Children of Susan Edson Tarbox : 

1275. William Lund Tarbox, born in Randolph, on June 21, 1824. 

1276. Elizabeth (" Betsey") Tarbox, born in Randolph on May 22, 1S29. 
William Lund Tarbox 1275 married on October 21, 1847, Charlotte, daughter 

of Jacob and Charlotte (Hobart) Foster, born in Randolph, on December 29, 
1822. He died on June 21, 1849. His widow died at Randolph, November 20, 
1902. 

Elizabeth (Betsey) Tarbox 1276 inarried in Montpeher, on May 3, 1848, 
Charles, son of Doctor Julius Yemans and Mary (Perrin) Dewey, born in Mont- 
peher on March 27, 1826. Children: William Tarbox Dewey, and eight inore, 
most of them living at Montpeher, Vt. William Tarbox Dewey, born Sep- 
tember 30, 1852, married, November 9, 1881, Alice Elmore French, born August 
7. 1857. 

970. John Henry, son of Alvin 651 and Catherine Henley 
(Soley) Edson, bom in the Marine Barracks, in Brooklyn, N. Y., 
on January 18, 1830, married, in Elizabeth, N. J., on June 8, 
1858, Frances Elizabeth Clarke, daughter of General Newman S. 
and Elizabeth (Durand) Clarke, born in the United States Bar- 
racks, in Houlton, Me., on November i, 1835. 

Children : 

1277. Frederick Clarke, born in Fort Union, New Mexico, on November 22, 

1859. 

1278. Catherine Henley, bom in Elizabeth, N. J., on August 14, 1864. 

1279. Henriette DeWolf, bom in Elizabeth, N. J., on November 20, 1867. 

1280. Francis, born in Elizabeth, N. J., on February 14, 1869. 

1281. Mary Louise, born in Elizabeth, N. J., on Augvist 23, 187 1. 

1282. Bemardine Russell, born in Elizabeth, N. J., on January 5, 1875. 
Catherine Henley Edson 1278 died in Elizabeth, N. J., on November 6, 1871 ; 

Henriette DeWolf Edson 1279, on September 6, 1869; and Francis Edson 1280, 
on September 12, 1869. None of the children have married. 

John Henry P^dson 970 entered the United States Military 
Academy, at West Point, N. Y., in 1848, from which he was 
graduated in 1853. On July i, 1853, he was assigned as Brevet 
Second Lieutenant to the regiment then called the Mounted 
Rifles, now the 3d U. S. Cavalry. After several months' duty at 
the Cavalry De])ot, at Jefferson Barracks, in Missouri, he joined 
his regiment, and served with it on the Rio Grande frontier of 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 581 

Texas, and in Arizona and New Mexico. On August 16, 1854, 
he was made Second Lieutenant, wliich position he voluntarily 
resigned on September i, i860. At the outbreak of the Civil 
War. he was temporarily connected with the New York Tam- 
many Regiment of Volunteers, and the ist Massachusetts Cav- 
alry as a i\Iajor. On August 27, 1862, when a resident of 
Montpelier, Vermont, he was commissioned Lieutenant-Colonel 
of the loth Regiment of Vermont Volunteers, which he organ- 
ized, and with which he went to the seat of war. Tlie regiment 
went into camp at Brattleboro, Vt., on August 15, 1862, and was 
mustered into the service of the United States on September ist. 
It departed on September 6th, going by the way of New York, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington to the front, and on 
September 8th, arrived at Camp Chase, near Arlington Heights. 
Prior to the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, in Mary- 
land, the regiment marched to Edward's Ferry, on the Potomac 
River, at which point the right wing, under Lieutenant-Colonel 
Edson, did picket duty from the 1 7th of September to the i ith of 
October, when the regiment went into camp at the mouth of 
Seneca Creek. On October 16, 1862, Lieutenant-Colonel Edson 
resigned, and withdrew from the regiment. 

In 1869 and 1870, Colonel John H. Edson was a member of 
the firm of Parsons & Edson, chemical manufacturers, 542 East 
20th Street, New York. From October, 1870, to April, 1879, he 
held a position in the United States Custom House, in New York 
City. Since i860, he has been a resident of Elizabeth, N. ]. 

971. Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph 656 and Sarah (de 
Troope) Edson, born in Randolph, Orange Covmty, \^t., on .\pril 
23, 1804, married the Rew Oeorge H. Williams, bom April 13, 
t8o2. She died on January 23, 1850, and he in 1877. 

Children: 

12S3. Mary Williams, born alioul 1834. 

1284. Louisa Williams, born in Pontiac. .Mich., on .\.])ri] 4, 1S41. 

They settled at Pontiac, but the husband was soon t-alled to 
a chair in tlic Cnixersity of Michigan, at .\im .Vrbor, where he 
remained until his death. 

972. Sarah, dauglitrr of Joseph 656 and Sarah (de Troope) 
Edson, born in Randol])!!, ( )range Count\", \'t., on June 2, 1806, 
married there, on January 8, i82(), I'^.dnuind, son of Abner and 



582 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Huldah Weston, born in Randolph, on February 18, 1799. She 
died there on November 20, 185 1, and he at West Randolph, on 
July 14, 1870. After her death, he, the Hon. Judge Weston, 
married (2d), in 1852, his cousin, Sarah Troope, who died in 
1854; and (3d), Amelia, the widow of Dr. Austin Bradford of 
Virginia. His only children were those born to him by his first 
wife. 

Children : 

1285. Edmund Weston, born in West Randolph on February 6, 1830. 

1286. Sarah Olivia Weston, born in West Randolph on September 28, 1837. 

1287. Mary Elizabeth Weston, born in West Randolph on May 29, 1839. 

975. Olivia Chase, daughter of Joseph 656 and Sarah (de 
Troope) Ed son, born in Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on 
January 15, 1824, married, on July i, 1841, in Pontiac, Mich., 
the Rev. John A. Wilson, of Baltimore. He died in Ypsilanti, 
Mich., on May 7, 1883, and she also there on November 12, 1893. 

Children : 

1288. Mary Clare Wilson, born in Pontiac, Mich., on May 2, 1842. 

1289. Henry Spicer Wilson, born in Ypsilanti, Mich., on October 27, 1849. 

1290. John A. Wilson, bom in Ypsilanti, Mich., on February 23, 1856. 

982. Chauncey Parker, son of John Joy 661 and vSarah 
(Barnes) Edson, born in Aurelius, Cayuga County, N. Y., on 
April 24, 181 7, married, in February, 1834, Rebecca La Rue. 
He died on January i, 1841. 

Children : 

1291. Sarah, born on December 6, 1834. 

1292. Mary Jane, born on August 6, 1836. 

1293. Harriet, born on June 24, 1838. ^,_ 

Mary Jane 1292 married (ist) John ^,. Beck, and (2d) Daniel Spencer. 
Children: Sarah, John; Jacob, Fredei'ick, Walter, Bessie. 

The family lived in Charlotte, Mich. 

983. Sarah Philena, daughter of John Joy 661 and Sarah 
(Barnes) Edson, bom in Aurelius, Cayuga County, N. Y., on 
November 5, 1819, "married, but secured a divorce after a few 
years, because of the unfaithfulness of her husband. He soon 
married again, after which she took legal measures to have her 
maiden name restored to her, and to be given also to her chil- 
dren." She died in Washington in 187 1. 

Children : 

1294. John Joy Edson, born in JefEerson, O., on May 17, 1846. 

1295. Joseph Romanzo Edson, bom in Jefferson, O., on Augtist 17, 1847. 

1296. Sarah Levangia Edson, born in Jefferson, O., on June 4, 1849. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 583 

Sarah Philena Edson 983 w£is a woman of marked literary- 
ability, which enabled her to edit for a time a newspaper with 
distinct success. At the outbreak of the Civil War she volun- 
teered her services to the National Government as a nurse, and 
made such services not only important and notable in different 
hospitals in the City of Washington, but also in teniporary ones 
on fields of battle. Her patriotic career as a nurse is interestingly 
recorded in Eminent Women of the War. 

985. Susan .\nn (M.D.), daughter of John Joy 661 and Sarah 
(Barnes) Edson, born in Auburn, Cayuga County, N. Y., on 
June 24, 1823. She died in Washington, D. C, on November 12, 
i8q7, or November 14, 1898. She was graduated, on March i, 
1S54, at the Homoeopathic College, at Cleveland, Ohio, and 
established herself as practising physician of that school of medi- 
cine in Auburn. At the beginning of the Civil War she volun- 
teered as a nurse, and went to Washington, D. C, where she 
served in the different army hospitals, and also at Fortress 
Monroe, and at camp hospitals on the Peninsula. At the close 
of the war she returned to Auburn and resumed her practice. 
In 1872, she changed her residence to Washington, D. C, and 
there gave her professional attention to such calls as the condi- 
tion of her failing health permitted. When President James A. 
Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, on July 2, 1881, she was 
summoned to his bedside, and became a continuous attendant 
upon the sufferer. Congress voted her three thousand dollars for 
her services. Previously and subsequently the family employed 
her as a physician. 

997. Daniel Sherod, son of Daniel Sherwood 663 and Doroth}- 
(Pease) Edson, born in Springfield, Mass., on January 2, 1825, 
married, in Spring Grove, Minnesota, on February 8, 1858, 
Martha Halverson of Norway. 

Children : 

1297. Martha Ann, l)i)rn in Spring Grove on December 13, 1S5S. 

1298. Helen Albina, born in Spring Grove on May 22, i860. 

1299. Rose Ann, born in Spring Grove on February 17, 1S62. 

1300. Malinda Ann, born in Union, Wis., on May 22, 1S64. 

1301. Daniel Sherod, born in Little Wolf, Wis., on March 11, iS66. 

1302. Mary Elizabeth, l)orn in LilUe Wolf. Wis., on May 26, 1S6S. 

1303. Oscar Matthias, born in Little Wolf, Wis., on March 6, 1S70. 

Martha Ann 1297 married, on February 22, 1677, Milan Stedwell, who died 
on October S, 1S8S. Child: Joseph Francis born on September 22, iS8S. 



584 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Daniel Sherod 1301 died in Little Wolf in 1S70. Mary Elizabeth 1302 married, 
at Hazel, S. D., Louis Hallett. After graduation from Brookings College, 
S. D., she studied law and was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-two 
years. She also took a course of oratory, in Boston, Mass. She died in San 
Francisco on November i, 1895. Oscar Matthias Edson 1303 married, at 
Castlewood, S. D., on May 15, 1895, Minnie Karn. He was educated at Brook- 
ings College, the State Agricultural College of South Dakota. 

Daniel Sherod Edson 997, the father, enlisted on September 
4, 1864, in Company E, 5th Wisconsin Infantr}^ Volunteers, Cap- 
tain C. R. Men'itt. Having been in a number of battles and 
skirmishes, he was wounded in both legs in a charge at Peters- 
burg, Va. He was sent to Fort Randall Hospital, in Madison, 
Wis., where he was honorably discharged on June 8, 1865. In 
1880, he removed to South Dakota, taking up one hundred and 
sixty acres of land given him by the National Government. 
There he lived until April, 1899, and then removed to Blanchard, 
Iowa. He has held many official positions, as District Clerk, 
School Director, Justice of the Peace, and Town Treasurer. 

998. Dorothy Ann, daughter of Daniel Sherwood 663 and 
Dorothy (Pease) Edson, born in Ware, Mass., on October 27, 
1826, married, in Huntington, Mass., on June 6, 1853, George W. 
Lowell of Wacousta, Mich. She died in Wacousta, on March 29, 
1896. 

Children : 

1304. Mary H. Lowell, born in Grand Rapids, Mich., on June 2, 1855. 

1305. Anna G. Lowell, bom on March 6, 1857. 

1306. Thomas J. W. Lowell, bom on March 27, 1858. 

1307. Sarah E. M. Lowell, born on December 23, 1865. 

1308. George F. Lowell, born on January 30, 1868. 

999. Sarah Albina, daughter of Daniel Sherwood 663 and 
Dorothy (Pease) Edson, bom on November 15, 1830, married, 
in Wacousta, Mich., Calvin J. Covey, a prominent physician of 
Grand Ledge, Mich., where he died in October, 1896. 

Children : 

1309. Calvin Edson Covey, born in Grand Ledge on July 28, 1859. 

1310. Dorothy Lucy Covey, bom in Grand Ledge on April 23, 1863. 

1311. Alfred Dale Covey, born in Grand Ledge on Jvme 6, 1869. 

1009. Henry, son of Jerah 687 and Sophia (Stiles) Edson, 
born in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on May 8, t8i2, married, 
in Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on September i, 1835, Clarissa, 
daughter of Ephraim and Hannah (Sanders) Capron, born in 
Williamstown, Orange County, on March i, 1816. She died in 



E*DSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 585 

Detroit, Mich., cm October 13, 1876, and he in .Mem|)his, Mich., 
on July 26, 1890. 
Children : 

1312. Henry L., b(jrn in Brooktickl, Yl., on July 20, 1H39. 

1313. Ellen A., born in Brookfield, Vt., on July 31, 1H47. 

1314. Lucy J., born in Brookfield, Vt., on February 2, t<S50. 

ion. P^lecta Pomeroy, daughter of Jerah 687 and vSophia 
(Stiles) Edson, bom in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on ^lay 
31, 1816, married there, (ist), on January i, 1839, Andrew 
Wheatley Bigelow, son of Seth G. and Lucy (Wheatley) Bige- 
low, bom in Brookfield, Vt., on September 14, 181 5. He died 
there on March 27, 1849. She m.arried (2d) Samuel Milton Bige- 
low, of East Brookfiekl, \'t., on October 11, 1854. He died there 
on October 8, 1855, and she, in Rochester, X. Y., on Julv 17, 1891. 

Children by first husband : 

1315. Marcia Sophia Bigelow, born in Brookfield, Vl., on November 5, 1S42. 

1316. Alice Marian Bigelow, born in Brookfield, Vt., on December 31, 1S47. 
Marcia married, in Rochester, N. Y., on December 22, 1863, William R. 

Oatley, who died there on August 12, 1867. Child: Wheatley Tafft, born on 
June 29, 1867, died Augtist 4, 1867. 

1014. Jerah, son of Jerah 687 and Sophia (Stiles) Edson, born 
in Brookfield, Orange County, Xt., on June 5, 1825, married Marv 
Plopkins Wheatley, on July 26, 1848. He died in Brookfield, on 
January 17, 1884, and she on October 2, 1884. 

Children : 

1317. Andrew Wheatley, born in Montello, Wis., on Decemlicr 26, 1851. 

1318. Alice Marinda, born in Montello, Wis., on November 24, 1853. 

1319. Marcia Louisa, born in Montello, Wis., on May 21, 1858. 

1320. Mary Frances, born in Montelln. Wis., on Octoljer 13, t86o. 

1321. Marshall Otto, born in Brookfield, Vt., on May 1, 1865. 

Marcia Loviisa 1319 died October 29, i86t; and Mary Frances 1320 dieil in 
Brookfield, Vt., on Avigust 13, 1871. 

Jerah Edson 1014 lived in Montello, Wis., from 1849 to 1863, 
where he held the office of Register of Deeds and Town Clerk. In 
1863, he moved to ih-ookfield, \'t., where he resided on his old 
home farm until his death, lie was a deacon of the Second 
Congregational Church. 

1025. Martha Ann, daughter of Harris 688 and I-:mily 
(Thacher) Edson, born on .May k), 1843, mafied, on ( )ctober 8, 
1867. Freeman Adkins Crafts of W'hatcly, franklin Count v, 
Mass. 

Children : 



586 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

1322. Charles Edson Crafts, born on July 14, i86g. 

1323. Katharine Electa Crafts, born on May 22, 1871. 

Charles Edson Crafts 1322 married Margaret Hedrick of Hammonton, 
N. J. Child: Edson Lindsay, born on Atigust 15, 1899. Katharine Electa 
1323 married George F. Pease of Whately, on September 15, 1897. 

1042. Charles Henry, son of Henry 732 and Mary Alice 
(Stetson) Edson, bom in East Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on September 3, 1848, married there, on December 24, 
1879, Mary Melinda, daughter of Hon. Benjamin W. and Julia 
A. (Orr) Harris, born in Boston, Mass., on February 10, 1852. 
They reside in Whitman, Mass. 

Children : 

1324. Julia Harris, born in East Bridgewater, Mass., on March lo, 1881. 

1325. Margaret Orr, born in Whitman, Mass., on January i, 1888. 

Charles Henry Edson studied law in East Bridgewater with 
the Hon. William H. Osborne, and in the Columbian Law School, 
Washington, D. C. He was admitted to the Supreme Court of 
the District of Columbia, on October 27, 1879, and to practise in 
the courts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at Plymouth, 
on February 4, 1889. As an attorney and counsellor-at-law his 
office is at No. 82 Devonshire Street, Boston, Mass. ; his home 
office being at Whitman. 

1044. Mary Alice, daughter of Henry 732 and Mary Alice 
(Stetson) Edson, born in East Bridgewater, Plymouth County, 
Mass., on December i, 1855, married there, on April 9, 1874, 
Walter Curtis, son of Orra P. Winslow and Minot C. Shaw, bom 
in East Bridgewater, on August 9, 1852. 

Children : 

1326. Richard Edson Shaw, bom in East Bridgewater, Mass., on September 8, 

1885. 

1327. Florence Winslow Shaw, bom on November 15, 1890. 

1328. Marjorie Shaw, born on October 27, 1893. 

10S4. Azelia, daughter of Oliver Stewart 750 and Henrietta 
(Alden) Edson, born in Dane County, Wis., on February 12, 
1847, married, in Blairstown, Benton County, Iowa., on Decem- 
ber 31, 1873, William C. Henry. 

Children : 

1329. Alden Edson Henry, born in Wilbcr, Saline County, Neb., on June 29, 

1877. 

1330. Margaret Edith Henry, born in Wilber, Saline County, Neb., on June 6, 

1879. 

1331. Gladys Henry, bom in Pawnee City, Pawnee Covmty, Neb., on Decem- 

ber 18, 1881. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 587 

William C. Henry 1084 served with distinction in the 7th 
Kansas Cavalry Regiment, and was brevetted Captain for gallant 
action during the Civil War. 

1086. Emergene, daughter of Oliver Stewart 750 and Henri- 
etta (Alden) Edson, bom in Dane Countv, Wis., on January 6, 
1 85 1, married, in Blairstown, Benton County, Iowa, on January 
19, 1 87 1, James H. Henry, bom in Michigan, in November, 1845. 

Children : 

1332. William Edson Henry, born in Blairstown, Benton County, la., on 

Deccinber 29, 1871. 

1333. Elizabeth E. Henry, born in Walnut, Pottawattomie County, la., on 

January 11, 1879. 

1334. Joseph E. Henry, born in Walnut, Pottawattamie County, la., on 

March 5, 1886. 

1087. Rowena, daughter of Oliver Stewart 750 and Henrietta 
(Alden) Edson, bom in Dane County, Wis., on April 25, 1852, 
married, in Cedar Rapids, Linn County, Iowa, in August, 1876, 
John Loomis Stevens. 

Children : 

1335. Olive Stevens, born in the town of Ames, Story County, la., on October 

20, 1S77. 

1336. Genevieve Stevens, born in the town of Ames, Story County, la., on May 

9, 1881. 

1337. Edith Stevens, born in the town of Ames, Story County, la., on Julv 

4, 18S3. 

1338. Imogene Stevens, bom in the town of Ames, Story County, la., on March 

19, 1885. 

1339. John Edson Stevens, born in the town of Ames, Story County, la., on 

December 24, 1887. 

1340. Thaddeus Stevens, born in the town of Ames, Story County, Ta., on 

November 21, 1889. 

1089. James Bassett, son of Oliver Stewart 750 and Henrietta 
(Alden) Edson, bom in Dane Countv, Wis., on September 5, 
1855, married, in Wilber, Sahne County, Xeb., on October 31, 
1877, Emma, daughter of John and Catherine ( WilHams) Thomas, 
born in the town of Stanton, Goodhue Count)^ Minnesota, on 
February 26, 1858. 

Children : 

1341. James Oliver, born in the town of Willur, Saline County, Neb., on 

September 9, 1S7S. 

1342. William Henry, born in the town of Wilber, Saline County, Neb., on 

December 13, 1 Sjcj. 

1343. Charles Leroy, born in the town of Wilber, Saline County, Neb., on 

Septeml )er 6 , 1 88 1 . 



588 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

1344. George Thomas, born in the town of Marcus, Cherokee County, la., on 

January 2, 1884. 

1345. Frederic K., born in the town of Cviba, RepubUc County, Kan., on 

March 10, 1886. 

1346. Henrietta Alden, born in the town of Cuba, Repubhc County, Kan., on 

December 30, 1SS8. 

1347. Albert Borchers, born in the city of Sacramento, Sacramento County, 

Cal., on December 23, 1892. 

James Bassett PMson 1089, the father, removed from Wis- 
consin, in 1875, to Nebraska, thence, in 1883, to Iowa, and thence, 
in 1885, to Kansas. In 1886, he was defeated in his candidacy 
for the Kansas State Legislature, on the Democratic ticket. In 
1892, he accepted the position of General Manager of the Central 
Electric Railway Company, in Sacramento, Cal. 

109S. Elizabeth Ann, daughter of Gamaliel 757 and Hannah 
(Boylan) Edson, born in Elba, Genesee County, N. Y., on July 
4, 1 82 7, married there, on July 18, 1851, Ancil Foster. He died 
in Monroe, 111., on Septeniber 10, 1867, and she in Rockford, 
Winnebago County, 111., on August 10, 1880. 

Child : 

1348. Emerson Foster, born in the town of Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on 

June 12, 1854. 

1099. Alonzo James, M.D., son of Gamaliel 757 and Hannah 
(Boylan) Edson, bom in Elba, Genesee County, N. Y., on April 7, 
1830, married (ist), in Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on Oc- 
tober 4. 1849, Cornelia E. Howe. She died in Cincinnati, (3hio, 
on September 25, 1862. He married (2d),, in Rockford, Winne- 
bago County, 111., on January 2, 1865, Mercy May Banks, boni in 
Canada, on January 17, 1837. 

Children by second wife : ' 

■' -born in Monroe, Oole County, 111., on September 10, 1866. 

1350. Burtis S., i "^ .r- - 1 

1351. George Alonzo, born in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on October 4, 1868. 

1352. Catharine May, born in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on January 24, 1871. 
Catharine May 1352 married in Rockford, 111., on January 20, 1892, Gilbert 

M. Thompson, born in Kemptville, Ontario Covmty, Canada, on April 27, 
1868. 

Doctor Alonzo James Edson 1099 removed to Ogle County, 
111., in 1857. His present residence is 327 East State Street, 
Rockford, 111. 

1100. Maryette Genette, daughter of Gamaliel 757 and 
Hannah (Bo^dan) Edson, born in Elba, Genesee County, N. Y., 
on March 22, 1832, married, in Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 589 

on August 7, 1848, Cyrus C. Tlosmer. She died in ^^f)nr(K^ Ogle 
County, 111., on August i 1, t886, and he in Roekford, 111., on 
November 4, 1891. 
Children : 

1353. Rosina Malviiui llosnior, l)()rn in Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on 
October 2, 1853. 




JAMES LAFAYETTE EDSON 



1354. Alonzo James llosnur, Inirn in Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., on May 

I 2, '1856. 

1355. Ilattie Cornelia Ilosmcr, born in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on August 

10, 1859. 



590 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

1356. Emma C. Hosmer, born in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on January i 5, 18 — . 

1357. Albert Edson Hosmer, bom in Rockford, 111., on October 12, 1865. 
Rosina Malvina 1353 married on March 21, 1879, Charles Buckland. She 

died in Byron, Genesee County, N. Y., on May 17, 1896. Hattie Corneha 1355 
married in Rockford, 111., on January 25, 1883, Theodore C. Johnson. Emma 
C. 1356 died on October 7, 1872. Albert Edson 1357 married on February 11, 
1886, Hannah Martin. 

1102. James LaFayette, son of Lewis Morgan 759 and Sarah 
Ames (Flint) Edson, bom in the town of Batavia, Genesee 
County, N. Y., on July 31, 1834, married, in Detroit, Mich., on 
August 17, 1857, Julia, daughter of Dennis and Honorah Collins. 
He died in Detroit, Mich-, on August 25, 1895, and she, at Oak 
Grove Sanitarium, Flint, Michigan. Their bodies are buried in 
Mount Elliott Cemetery, Detroit. 

Children : 

1358. Mary Elizabeth, born in Detroit, Mich., on May 5, 1859. 

1359. Mary Ames, born in Detroit, Mich., on August 5, i860. 

1360. Ella Ehzabeth, bom in Detroit, Mich., on September 15, 1862. 

1361. James LaFayette, bom in Detroit, Mich., on May 10, 1866. 

1362. Lilian Emmons, bom on October 24, 1868. 

1363. Louis LaFayette, bom on December 23, 1874. 

Mary Ehzabeth Edson 1358 was buried in Detroit, Mich., on August 7, 
1859. Ella Elizabeth 1360 married, in Detroit, on November 26, 1885, Edward 
T. Adams. She was educated at academies of the "Sacred Heart," at Detroit, 
and in Manhattan ville, N. Y., at which latter convent she was graduated in 
June, 1881. Rarely gifted in a musical and literary way she won the admira- 
tion of her companions and their hearts by her happy disposition. She died 
on July 13, 1886. James LaFayette Edson 1361 died in Detroit on May 31, 
1866. Lilian Emmons Edson 1362 married, on June 24, 1896, Frank Conger 
Baldwin, of Detroit, Mich. She was graduated from the Academy of the "Sacred 
Heart," Manhattan ville, N. Y., on June 24, 1886. Louis LaFayette Edson 
1363 was buried in Detroit on June 21, 1876. 

1107. Edwin Homer, son of Barnabas Hall 760 and Julia 
Maria (Ames) P2dson, bom in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, 
N. Y., on January 29, 1839, married, on December 28, 1863, 
Carrie L. McCullough. He died on February 18, 1878. 

Children : 

1364. Grant W., bom on October 27, 1865. 

1365. Chnton H., bom in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on Decem- 

ber 29, 1867. 

1366. Hattie, born on July 4, 1873. 

1367. Edwin, born on Avigust 26, 1S78. 

Grant W. Edson 1364 married Bernice Strong in March, 1895 ; Hattie Edson 
1366 married Lucius Mathewson in April, 1894. 

1108. Lois Maria, daughter of Barnabas Hall 760 and Julia 
Maria (Ames) Edson, born in Charlotte, Chautauqua County, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 591 

N. Y., on January 30, 1843, married, on October t, 1865, Nelson 
A. Mansfield. 
Children : 

1368. May Mansfield, born in Charlotte, N. Y., on October lo, 1867. 

1369. Anna Mansfield, born on November 6, 1869. 

1370. Julia O. Mansfield, born on October 27, 1S71. 

1371. Alta Mansfield, born on March 23, 1874. 

1372. Sheldon Mansfield, born on October 30, 1876 

1373. Frank W. Mansfield, born on June 26, 1878. 

1374. Clayton N. Mansfield, bom on May 25, 1880. 

May married on Aug^ist 28, 1889, John W. Hooker. Anna married, on 
February 17, 1S89, Delbart W. Penhollow. Julia O. died in 1873. -^^^ta mar- 
ried, on December 25, 1894, Charles G. Ruttenlntr. Sheldon married on No- 
vember 18, 1897, Elsie Stewart. 

Mrs. Nelson A. Mansfield 1108 lives at Forcstville, Chautau- 
qua Co., N. Y. 

1114. George W., son of Cyrenus Chapin 761 and Huldah 
(Nichols) Edson, bom in Eagle, Allegany County. N. Y.. on 
September 6, 1843, married, in Lyons, Ohio, on January 10, 
1869, Adelaide, daughter of Colonel W. H. and Emeline (Rich- 
ardson) Drew. 

Child : 

1375. Mabel Drew, born in Detroit, Mich., on July 8, 1878. 

Mabel D. was graduated at the "Liggett School," on June 5, 1900. 

George W. Edson served with the 74th Regiment N. Y. S. 
Volunteers. He was with the Seventh Division Construction 
Corps at Chattanooga, Tenn. He lives at Detroit, Mich., and is 
of the firm of Edson, ]\Ioore, & Co. 

1143. John Milton, son of Obcd 777 and Sarali (Scott) Edson, 
born in Warren County, Pa., October 12, 1832. He removed to 
Johnstown, with his parents, about 1848. He married, Decem- 
ber 7, 1857, c'lt McHcnry, 111., Elizabeth M. Swails. 

Children : 

1375 A. John Milton. 
1375 B. Willis Scott. 
1375 c. Daughter. 

John Milton, Jr., 1375 A, is with the Armour Company, Chicago. Willis S. 
1375 B is on the editorial staff of the A. N. Kellogg Newspaper Company. The 
daughter is Mrs. H. H. Hammond, of Syracuse, N. Y. 

John M. 1 143 attended a select school ;il jolinslown. Pa., 
and the academy in Indiana County. He entered the office of 
the Alleghany Mouuiaiu ILcho as an assistant, and was employed 
on Chicago daily newspapers for three years; edited and pub- 



592 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



lished newspapers in Illinois, in Du Page, McHenry, De Witt, 
and Henry, Counties. In 1867, he returned to Chicago, and 
engaged with A. N. Kellogg, as the first editor employed by him 
in his newspaper auxiliary enterprise, and has remained in that 
enterprise ever since, and is editor in chief. 

1147. Obed, son of John Milton 778 and Hannah (Alverson) 
Edson, boni in Sinclairville, town of Charlotte, Chautauqua 




JOHN MILTON EDSON, 1832-19 



County, N. Y., on February i8, 1832, married there, on May 11, 
1859, Emily Amelia, daughter of Caleb J. and Emily (Haley) 
Allen, bom in New London, Conn., on November 27, 1835. She 
died in Sinclairville, on March i, 1899. 
Children : 

1376. Fanny Allen, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on April 28, i860. 

1377. John Milton, bom in Sinclairville, N. Y., on September 29, 1861. 

1378. Samuel Allen, bom in Sinclairville, N. Y., on September 15, 1863. 

1379. Mary Ursula, bom in Sinclairville, N. Y., on September 11, 1865. 

1380. Hannah, l)orn in Sinclairville, N. Y., on Fcbrary 15, 1869. 

1381. Walter Henry, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on January 8, 1874. 

1382. Ellen Emily, bom in Sinclairville, N. Y., on April 21, 1875. 

1383. Allen Obed, bom in Sinclairville, N. Y., on September 3, 18S0. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



593 



Samuel Allen 137S died in Sinclairville on November 16, 1872; Mary- 
Ursula 1379, on November 27, 1872; Hannah 1380 on December 10. 1881. 

Walter Henry 13S1, the third son, married in Shumla, town of Pomfret, 
Chautauqua County, N. Y., on June 27, 1899, Florilla Belle, daughter of 
Francis Drake and Martha Isabel (Groven) Clark, bom in Frcdonia, Chautauqua 
Count^^ on April 19, 1874. He is a graduate of Cornell University and is 
practising law in Falconer, Chautauqua County. 



Ellen Emily 
ary 16, 1SS2. 



1382 died on February i, 1887; and Allen Obed 1383 on Janu- 



f^^ 'IP^^K., 



/^*^ 





^^^ QcU^ 



The Hon. Obed Edson was admitted to the bar of Chauiau- 
qua County on April 8, 1853. In 1874, he was elected a member 
of the Assembly of the State of New York to represent tlie 
Second District of Chautauqua County, which he did at the 
ninety-eighth session, from January 5, to May 22, 1875. ^^- 
sides attaining a high reputation as a counsclor-al-law, he has 
won much renown as a local antiquarian and historian. Promi- 
nently identified as an Ancient Free and Accepted ]\Iason with 
38 



594 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

the work of the order in Chautauqua County, he is the compiler 
of the valuable historical symposium entitled Masonry in Chau- 
tauqua. A Story of Masonic Work from the Year i8i^. To- 
gether with a Series of Sketches of Various Lodges from the Year 
i8ij. H. C. Drake, publisher, Sinclairville, N. Y., 1897. The 
sketches of Sylvan Lodge 394 and Sylvan Lodge 303, in it, were 
written by him. 

The following summary briefly presents information relating 
to him and his kinsmen as members of the several lodges in- 
stituted in the towns in which they were residents. A lodge of 
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons was opened on Januarv 28, 
1819, under the name of the "Masonic Society," at the "Major 
Sinclair" settlement, later known as vSinclairville. Major 
vSamuel Sinclair was the first worshipful master of the lodge. 
Shortly afterward, Obed Edson, his stepson, became a member 
of the society. On December 26, 1822, the members of the 
" Masonic Society" began working under a dispensation from the 
Grand Lodge, at which time OV)ed Edson was junior warden. On 
June 5, 1824, Sylvan Lodge 394 was instituted in the town of 
Gerry, then comprising the present territory of the towns of 
Gerry and Charlotte, the "Major Sinclair" settlement being at 
that time in the centre of the town of Gerry; and on Julv 7, 
1824, the installation of the first officers of the lodge took place, 
Obed Edson being installed as junior warden, and John Milton 
Edson, his brother, one of the two stewards. As is related, "the 
installation was not only an important event to the Masons par- 
ticipating in it, but was esteemed of great interest by the invited 
guests who witnessed it, and was long remembered. It was on 
this occasion, probably, that a banquet was held by the Masons 
in the shade of a grove of wild-plum trees that had been trans- 
planted from the Cassadaga Swamp. Some old trees, relics of 
this grove, which stood until recently just west of the present 
hotel, marked the spot. Mrs. Fanny (Edson) Sinclair, wife of 
Samuel Sinclair, superintended on the occasion. She spread the 
table and provided the feast. She had been befriended in her 
early life, in her great need, by the Masons of Madison County. 
More than once afterwards, on similar occasions, did she show 
her gratitude for their early kindness." 

During the anti-Masonic excitement, between the years 1830 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 595 

and 1835, the charter of Sylvan Lodge 394 was surrendered. 
Late in the year 1852, John M. Edson and other former members 
of the lodge, residing in Sinclairville and the vicinity, exerted 
themseh'es to revive the spirit of early Masonry in the county, 
and obtained the charter of Sylvan Lodge 303, on June 11, 1853, 
of which John M. Edson was elected the first master and for a 
number of years afterward, as was his son, the Hon. Obed Edson, 
in 1863 and in 186-, who had been made a Mason, in 1857, in the 
lodge in Sinclairville. 

The Hon. Obed Edson was one of the fotmders of the " Ever- 
green Cemetery Association," organized in Sinclairville, on June 
21, 1862. The attractive burial-ground, handsomely orna- 
mented with evergreen shrubs and trees, has a fine and extensive 
prospect of the surrounding country and the village founded by 
Major Samuel Sinclair. 

The celebration of the centennial of the first settlement 
within the present bounds of Chautauqua County, at West- 
field, in 1902, was marked by a great procession, the delivery of 
pertinent addresses, and other interesting exercises, in Westfield, 
on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 24th and 25th of June, 1902. 
The historical address of the Hon. Obed Edson on the enjoyable 
occasion, of more than eight columns of print in the W^est field 
Republican of June 25, 1902, is replete with valuable informa- 
tion and descriptive features of the origin and growth of the 
coimty. 

1148. Fanny Ursula, daughter of John Milton 778 and Han- 
nah (Alverson) Edson, bom in Sinclairville, town of Charlotte, 
Chautauqua County, N. Y., oia June 4, 1834, married there, 
Henry Sylvester, son of Melzar and Anna (Gilmour) Sylvester, 
bom in the town of Gerry, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on July 2, 
1828. He died in Sinclairville, on July l^:,, 1899. 
Children : 

1384. Anna Gilmour Sylvester, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on January 5, 1S56. 

1385. Emily Amelia Sylvester, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on November 22, 

1857- 

1386. Katie Sylvester, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on November 20, 1S63. 

1387. Frederick Henry Sylvester, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on September 

22, 1867. 
Anna (Hlmour Sylvester married Charles Dingle3^ l^nily Amelia Sylvester 
married Herbert H. Hvmt. Katie Sylvester died in Sinclairville on August iS, 
1S64. Frederick Henry Sylvester married, at Charlotte, Chautauqua County, 



596 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

N. Y., on September 22, 1897, Mary Floy, daughter of Congdon and Ruth B. 
(BurHnggame) [Burhngham ?] Seaver. He is a lawyer and resides in Sinclairville. 

1156. Willis, son of Darwin Noble 788 and Hannah (Bliss) 
Ed son, bom in Hunter, Greene County, N. Y., on April 25, 
1834, married (ist), in Downsville, Delaware County, N. Y., 
Catharine Clements, who died about January i, 1868. He 
married (2d) Rose Staddle, and (3d) Mrs. Harriet Coolen. He 
died in Oneonta, Otsego County, N. Y., on January 25, 1896. 

Children by first wife : 

1388. Cora, bom in Downsville, Delaware County, N. Y. 

1389. Flora Eliza, bom in Downsville, Delaware County, N. Y. 

1390. Frederick D., bom in Downsville, Delaware County, N. Y. 

1391. May Hayden, bom in Downsville, Delaware County, N. Y. 

1392. George Clements, born in Downsville, Delaware County, N. Y. 

Cora died in infancy. Flora Eliza married Albert Gates. They reside in 

Oneonta. They have one daughter, Catharine. Frederick D. married , 

May Hayden married James Wilsey. They reside at Toms River, N. J. 
George Clements, an alumnus of MacAUister College, Minnesota, was graduated 
in 1902 at the Theological Seminary in Princeton, N. J. He married, on June 
16, 1902, Isabelle Campbell. He is pastor at Comersville, Pa. 

Willis Edson, the father, had for a time a hardware store in 
Downsville. Later he removed to Oneonta, where he was em- 
ployed in the shops of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Com- 
pany until his decease. 

1161. Rufus Palen, son of Darwin Noble 788 and Hannah 
(Bliss) Edson, bom in Olive, Ulster County, N. Y., on September 
16, 1842, married (ist), in Ohvet, Michigan, on June 18, 1868. 
Clara A., daughter of Horace and Cynthia M. Stimson, bom in 
Lawrence, Van Buren County, Michigan, on December 20, 1843. 
She died in Fergus Falls, Minn., on July 21, 1897. He married 
(2d), in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada, on December 29, 1898, 
Jennie, daughter of George and Ann Dunoon, bom in Wick, 
Scotland, on April 6, 1855, and widow of George Herbert Bar- 
man, who died on February 19, 1894, and by whom she had one 
child, Ruth, born November 5, 1883. 

Children by first wife : 

1393. Edward Darwin, born in Kalamazoo, Mich., on April 6, 1870. 

1394. William Noble, born in Kalamazoo, Mich., on October 6, 1873. 
Edward Darwin Edson 13 93 was graduated from Olivet College, Michigan, and 

later from the Law Department of Columbia College, New York City. His 
office as a counselor-at-law is in the Washington Life Building, 141 Broadway, 
New York. 

Rufus Palen Edson 1161, the father, practised law in Kala- 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 597 

mazoo, ]\Iich, seven years; he then removed to Caro, Tuscola 
County, Mich., where he Hved ten years and where, for sLk years, 
he was prosecuting attorney for Tuscola County. Thence he 
went to Duluth, Minn., where he resided thirteen years, and was 
city attorney there. He has for three years been a counselor-at- 
law in New York City. 

1164. William Darwin, son of Darwin Noble 788 and Hannah 
(Bliss) Edson, born in Wawarsing, Ulster County, N. Y., on Oc- 
tober 16, 1849, married, in Laurens, Otsego County, N. Y., on 
January 21, 1875, Matilda Allen. 

Children : 

1395. Frank Aaron, ^ bom in Sidney, Delaware County, N. Y., on November 

1396. Robert Darwin, ' 30, 1879. 

1397. William Ray, bom on July 7, 18S9. 

Robert Darwin Edson died on September 20, 1880. William Ray Edson 
died on December 25, 1889. 

William Darwin Edson, after practising law for some time in 
Unadilla, Otsego County, N. Y., removed to Duluth, Minn., and 
pursued his profession as a counselor-at-law, and there for the 
last nine years he has been judge of the Mimicipal Court. 

1180. John AYesley, son of \'irgil James 794 and Edson, 

bom on July 7, 1834, was married, in Kingston, Ulster County, 
N. Y., on May 26, 1855, by the Rev. C. F. Hoes, to . 

Children : 

1398. Evaline C, bom on April 28, 1856. 

1399. Virgil James, born on January 5, 1858. 

1400. Lavina, bom on May 17, i860. 

1401. Alferetta, born on September 22, 1862. 
1-402. Isabelle, bom on February 25, 1865. 

1403. Herbert Harvey, bom on June 18, 1867. 

1404. Rose Valerie, born on September 29, 1869. 

1405. Orizon Vandevoort, born on April 7, 1872. 

1406. Milton Lewis, bom on March 14, 1875. 

1407. Annette Belle, bom on November 19, 1877. 

Alferetta married Traub. Isabelle died on March 4, 1S71. Orizon 

Vandevoort married . Milton Lewis married on December 26, 189S. 

Annette Belle married Edgar Palmer. Child: Hubert Main, bom December 
20, 1899. They reside in Farmington, Conn. 

1181. Jar\is Bonesteel, son of Marmont Bryan 799 and ^lar- 
garet Barbara (Bonesteel) EdscMi, born in Janesville, Rock 
Cotmty, Wis., on Ajiril ;:;o, 1S45, married, in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 
Christ Church (Prntcslant I-^piscopal), by the rector, the Rev. L. 
W. Bancroft, D.D., ^n I-\>braary 9, 1875. lilliza Ward, daughter 



598 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

of James Talmadge Gano and Janet (DeKay) Robins, born in 
Providence, R. I., on October i, 1848. He is the compiler of 
this genealogy. 
Children : 

1408. Janet De Kay, born at 396 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., on Novem- 

ber 2, 1875. 

1409. Herman Aldrich, born in Newark, N. J., on January 7, 1878. 

1410. Ethel Ward, bom in Adams, Berkshire County, Mass., on December 15, 

1883. 

1411. Marmont, born at 812 Union Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., on June 10, 

1888. 
Janet DeK. 1408 married Harry Smith Kelty. Herman A. 1409 married 
Jennie Finch Hutchinson. Ethel W. 1410 died March 27, 1886, at 199 St. 
John's Place, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

1190. John LeBeeter, son of Rev. Samuel 809 and Mary 
Miranda (Burr) Edson, born in Galena, 111., on November 17, 
1867, married, in Brooklyn, N. Y., on June i, 1892, Margaret 
Chadwick. 

Children : 

1412. Margaret, born on March 6, 1893. 

1413. Mary Virginia, bom on April 15, 1897. 

1414. Evelyn, born on February 5, 1900. 

John L. is in business in New York City, and resides at Mont- 
clair, N. J. 

1198. Frank Perkins, son of George F. 815 and Elizabeth 
(Slater) Edson, bom in Vanwert, Ohio, on April 22, 1858, mar- 
ried, in Springfield, Ohio, on December 22, 1892, Margaret Eliza- 
beth, daughter of Jesse W. and Mary Ellen (Bush) Baird, boni 
in Vanwert County, Ohio, on July 17, 1874. 

Children : 

1415. Helen Baird, bom in Vanwert, O., on November 25, 1893. 

1416. Horace Walter, bom in Vanwert, O., on February 18, 1896. 

1208. John Tracey, son of Cyrus 828 and Martha Davidson 
(Nelson) Edson, bom in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on 
February 15, 1850, married, in New York, N. Y., on June 23, 
1 88 1, Winona, daughter of Elie and Jeannie Van Dyck (Stacey) 
Charlier. 

Children : 

1417. Elie Charlier, born in Denver, Col., on March 26, 1882. 

1418. Constance d'Oliver, bom in Denver, Col., on November 28, 1886. 

1209. Julia Orr, daughter of Cyrus 828 and Martha Davidson 
(Nelson) Edson, bom in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on 
August 29, 185 1, married, in New York, N. Y., on April 20, 1875, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 599 

William R., son of George and Ann (Reed) Manierre. There 
were several children. 

1210. Chauncey Crapo, son of Alexander 830 and Elizabeth 
(Frothingham) Edson, born in New York, N. Y., on July 25, 
1 85 1, married (ist), in Norwich, Queens County, N. Y., Addie 
Wheeler. She died in Bayonne, N. J., and was buried in Nor- 
wich, N. Y. He married (2d), in Alliance, (3hio, Rosa Teeters. 
He lives in Kansas City, Mo. 

Children by second wife : 

1419. Edith. 

1420. (Baby). 

1212. Fanny Frothingham, daughter of Alexander 830 and 
Elizabeth (Frothingham) Edson, bom in New York, N. Y., on 
August 29, 1 86 1, married there, on September 21, 1882, Abner L- 
Ely. 

Child : 

1421. Richard Frothingham Ely, born in New York, N. Y., on February 13, 

1SS6. 

1216. Cyrus, son of Franklin 832 and Fanny Cameron (Wood) 
Edson, born in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., on September 8, 
1857, married (ist), in New York, N. Y., on August 5, 1881, Yir- 
ginia Churchill, daughter of William Rufus and Juliette (Church- 
ill) Page, bom in Norfolk, Va., on July 10, 1854. She died in 
New York, N. Y., on July 29, 1891, and he married (2d), in New 
York, N. Y., on April 6, 1892, Mary Emma, daughter of Henry 
and Mary Louise (Dusenbury) Van Velsor, widow of William 
Howell Quick, bom in New York, N. Y., on September 4, 1855. 

Children by first wife : 

1422. Franklin Churchill^ K^^^.^^ .^^ ^_^^^^ Y^^j._ ^_ y ,,,, .^j,,.;j ^^^ ^gg,_ 

1423. Helen Augusta, ' 

1424. Florence, born in New York, N. Y., on April 13, ICS83. 

1425. Ruth, born in New York, N. Y., on March 17, 18S6. 

142f). William Russell, born in New York, N. Y., on June 4. 1888. 
Florence 1424 died in New York, N. Y., on February 28, 1891. 

1217. Franklin, son of Franklin 832 and Fanny Cameron 
(Wood) Edson, bom in Al])any, Albany County, X. W, on Sep- 
tember 20. 1859, married, in St. Agnes's Protestant li^]>isco])al 
Chapel, on 92d Street, New York, N. Y., by the Rev. b:(l\vard A. 
Bradley, D.D., on November 2^, 1897, Elsie Morgan, daughter of 
Stuart Craig and Caroline Elizabeth (La Bau) Squier, \)oyn in 
Rahway, Union County, N. J., on December i8, 1876. 



6oo EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Child: 

1427. Stuart Franklin, bom in Irvington, Westchester County, N. Y., on 

June 20, 1900. 

1219. Henry Townsend, son of Franklin 832 and Fanny 
Cameron (Wood) Edson, bom in Albany, Albany County, N. Y., 
on August 13, 1864, married, in St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal 
Church, Philadelp)hia, Pa., on February i, 1887, Susan Douglas, 
daughter of Thomas Jacobi and Margarette M. (Whetharill) 
Diehl. 

Child : 

1428. Franklin Diehl, born in Philadelphia, Pa. 

1221. Robert Stewart, son of Franklin 832 and Fanny Cam- 
eron (Wood) Edson, bom at Fordham Heights, New York, on 
February 5, 1873, married, in chapel of St. John-in-the-Wilder- 
ness, Blue Mountain Lake, Hamilton County, N. Y., on July 5, 
1899, Fanny, daughter of Charles Henry and Jennie (Hale) 
Ropes, born in Port Chester, Westchester County, N. Y., on 
June 21, 1880. 

Child: 

1429. Fanny Cameron, born in New York, N. Y., on April i, 1900. 

1249. William Dunbar, son of Silas Dunbar 925 and Sarah 
Pancoast (Saunders) Edson, bom in Philadelphia, Pa., on Sep- 
tember 24, 1834, married, on May 5, 1856, Jennie Souder. 

Children : 

1430. Albert Dunbar, bom in Philadelphia, Pa., on April 25, 1857. 

1431. Frank, bom in Philadelphia, Pa., on Febrviary 27, 1859. 

1432. William Dunbar, bom in Philadelphia, Pa., on August 6, i860. 

1258. Alfred Herbert, son of William Fiske 929 and Susan 
H. (Hitchcock) Edson, bom in North Brookfield, Mass., on April 
4, 1852, married, on June 19, 1879, Ella Flerritage. 

Children : 

1433. William Hennessey, bom on March 24, 1880. 

1434. Mabel, born on April 28, 1882. 

1298. Helen Albina, daughter of Daniel Sherod 997 and 
Martha (Flalverson) Edson, born in Spring Grove, Minn., on 
May 22, i860, married, in Rampeska, Dakota, on June 27, 1883, 
Harrison S. Dewell. 

Children : 

1435. Nathaniel S. Dewell, born on August 8, 1885. 

1436. Rose Dewell, bom on November 26, 1886. 

1437. Daniel Sherwood Dewell, born on October 12, 1897. 

1299. Rose Ann, daughter of Daniel Sherod and Martha 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 60 1 

(Halverson) Edson, born in Spring Grove, i\Iinn., on Febmary 17, 
1862, married (ist), on July 3, 1881, Aaron J. Nichols, and (2(1), 
in 1899, James W. Helme of Adrian, Mich. Her first husband, 
bom in Adrian, Mich., in i860, died on Septemljcr 25, 1892. 
Child: 

143S. Alexander Douglas Nichols, born in Huron, S. D., on jne 22, 1887. 

1312. Henry L., son of Henry 1009 and Clarissa (Capron, 
Edson, bom in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on July 20, 
1839, married, in Roxbury, Washington County, Vt., on January 
2, 1868, Lucy Steele, bom in East Roxbur}^ Washington County, 
Vt., on March i, 1845. 

Children : 

1439. Mertele M., bom on October 10, 1S6S. 

1440. Roselle A., born on August lo, 1874. 

Mertelle M., the first daughter, died on May 6, 18S4. Roselle A. Edson 
married, on September 6, 1898, William Stone, of Greensboro, Orleans County, 
Vt. He died on April 6, 1901. 

1313. Ellen A., daughter of Henry 1009 and Clarissa (Capron) 
Edson, bom in Brookfield, Orange County, Yt., on July 31, 1847) 
married there, on December 23, 1866, Irving H., son of Noah, 
and Lydia (Wheatley) Paine, bom in Brookfield, on August 21, 

1843- ^ 

Children : 

1441. Henry L. Paine, born in St. Johnsbury, Vt., on December 5, 1867. 

1442. Clara L. Paine, born in Brookfield, Vt., on May 26, 1869. 

1443. Lucy E. Paine, born in Gvirley, Col., on August 7, 1872. 

1444. Alice B. Paine, born in Gurlcy, Col., on Jvily 19, 1874. 

1445. Rviby H. Paine, born in Gurley, Col., on Janviary 31, 1880. 

1446. Velmer Paine, born in Gurlcy, Col., on March 14, 1891. 

Henry L. 1441 died on January 30, 186S. Iauv Iv 1443 died on August 
~7' 1873; and Alice B. 1444 on February 20, 1S76. 

1314. Lucy J., daughter of Henry 1009 and Clarissa (Capron) 
Edson, bom in Brookfield, Orange County, \'t., on Fcbmary 2. 
1850, was married, in Detroit, Mich., on October 2, 1874, to 
Doctor George D., son of John and Mary (Paine) Carnes, bom 
in Pomfret, Windsor County, Vt. 

Children : 

1447. Eva P. Carnes, born in Covert. .Mich., on May 14, 1876. 

1448. Thomas H. Carnes, born in Covert. Mich., on June i, 1878. 

1317. Andrew Wlieatley, son of Jerah 10 14 and 'Sluvy Hop- 
kins (Wheatley) Edson, born in M(»ntello. Marcjuette County, 
Wis., on December 26, 185 1, married, in Brookfield, Orange 
County, Vt., on August 20, 1878, Cynthia Francelia, ilaughtcr of 



6o2 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Martin and Sophia Diana (Hatch) Paine, boni in Brookfield, Vt., 
on September 15, 1850. 
Children : 

1449. Pearl Paine, born in Randolph, Orange County, Vt., on October 24, 1879. 

1450. Helen Wheatley, born in Randolph, Orange Covinty, Vt., on February i, 

1882. 

1451. Edith Louise, bom in Attleboro, Bristol County, Mass., on April i, 1884. 

1452. Carroll Andrew, born in Worcester, Worcester County, Mass., on De- 

cember 29, I 891. 
Pearl Paine 1449, the son, was graduated at Dartmouth College, June 25 , 1902. 

Andrew Wheatley Edson 1 3 1 7 was graduated at the State Nor- 
mal vSchool, at Randolph, V^t., in 1870 ; from the Montpelier Semi- 
nary, in 1874; and from Dartmouth College in 1878. From 1878 
to 1879, he was principal of the West Randolph High School, 
and from 1879 to 1884, principal of the State Normal School, at 
Randolph, Vt. ; in 1884-5, superintendent of schools in Attle- 
boro, Mass.; 1885-7, superintendent of schools in Jersey City, 
N. J.; 1887-97, agent of the Massachusetts Board of Education; 
1897 to the present time, assistant superintendent of schools in 
New York City. He was an instructor for ten years in the Sum- 
mer Schools of Vermont, Washington, and Indiana ; and manager 
of the School of Methods, and instructor in School Management, 
at Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute, for ten years. He was 
instructor in school management and supervision at the Colum- 
bia University Summer School in 1902. 

1318. Alice Marinda, daughter of Jerah 10 14 and Mary Hop- 
kins (Wheatley) Edson, bom in Montello,. Wis., on November 24^ 
1853, married, on August 20, 1878, Edward C. Abbott. 

Children : 

1453. Clarence Edson Abbott, born in Randolph, Vt., on December 9, 1881. 

1454. Alden Harold Abbott, born in Franklin, Mass., on June 4, 1885. 

1455. Ernest Andrew Abbott, born in Franklin, Mass., on May 17, 1889. 

1456. Alice Mabel Abbott, born in Franklin, Mass., on December 13, 1890. 

1457. Hazel Francelia Abbott, born in Franklin, Mass., on July 12, 1892. 

Edward C. Abbott, dentist, is now residing in Franklin, Mass. 

1321. Marshall Otto, son of Jerah 1014 and Mary Hopkins 
(Wheatley) Edson, bom in Brookfield, Orange County, Vt., on 
May T, 1865, married, in Hanover, N. H., August 23, 1899, Alice 
H., daughter of Andrew H. and Louise F. (Flint) Warden, born 
March 23, 1868. 

Child : 

1458. Mary Louise, born on May 26, 1900. 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 603 

Marshall Otto Edson 1321 was graduated at the State Nor- 
mal School in Randolph, Vt., in 1882, from the Academy, in St. 
Johnsbury, Vt., in 1887, and from Dartmouth College, in 1891. 
He is now principal of the village schools in East Hampton, Conn. 

1349. Curtis G., son of Alonzo James 1099 and Mercy May, 
(Banks) Edson, born in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on September 
10, 1866, married, on March 18, i8g6, Ella Cunningham, bom in 
Guilford, Winnebago County, 111. 

Child: 

1459. Neva, born in New Milford, 111., on February i8, iSg;. 

1350. Burtis S., son of Alonzo James 1099 and Mercy May 
(Banks) Edson, bom in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on September 
10, 1866, married, in New Milford, 111., on January i, 1891, 
Agnes Blanche Thompson, born in Canada, on July 9, 1870. 

Children : 

1460. Nina Marie, bom on November 14, 1891. 

1461. Bernice, born on May 24, 1S96. 

1351. George Alonzo, son of Alonzo James 1099 and Mercy 
May (Banks) Edson, bom in Monroe, Ogle County, 111., on Oc- 
tober 4, 1868, married, in New Milford, 111., on January 20, 1892, 
Marian C. Corlett, bom in New Milford, on January i, 1874. 

Children : 

1462. Lewis A., born in Monroe, 111., on December 7, 1892. 
14G3. Infant son, born in Monroe, 111., on September 16, 1894. 

1464. William Hobart, born in Monroe, 111., on September 12, 1895. 

1465. Catharine Hazel, born in Monroe, 111., on November 11, 1896. 
The second son 1463 died on September 29, 1S94. 

1359. Mary Ames, daughter of James LaFayette 1102 and 
Julia (Collins) Edson, born in Detroit, Midi., on August 5, i860, 
married there, on July 18, 1888, Frank Ward Smith. 

Children : 

1466. Edson Hanford vSmith, born in Detroit, Mich., on June 20, 1S89. 
I 167. Marie Olean Smith, born in Detroit, Mich., on June 16, 1891. 
14()8. Frank Ward Smith, born in Detroit, Mich., on Septembers, 1892. 

Mrs. Mary Ames Sniitli was educated at the Academy of the 
"Sacred Heart," Detroit, from wliicli she was graduated on June 
25, 1879. 

137G. Fanny Allen, daughter ni' Obcd 1147 and Eniil)- 
Amelia (Allen) l->dson, born in .Sinrlair\-ilU', town of Charlotte, 
Chautauqua County, N. V., on A])ril 2S, iS()o, married there, on 
October 29, 1884, Jolm Alonzo, son of joy and Rosina (Flagg) 



6o4 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Love, bom in the town of Gerry, Chautatiqua County, on Feb- 
ruary 24, 1 86 1. 
Children : 

1469. Allen Joy Love, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on August 23, 18S5. 

1470. Nellie Edson Love, born in Sinclairville, N. Y., on January 2, 1887. 

The family reside in Sinclairville, N. Y. 

L377. John Milton, son of Obed 1147 and Emily Amelia 
(Allen) Edson, bom in Sinclairville, town of Charlotte, Chautau- 
qua County, N. Y., on September 29, 1861, married, in Minne- 
apolis, Minn., Alma Blanche, daughter of William and Hannah 
(Abbey) Green, bom at Ripley, Chautauqua County, N. Y., on 
June 20, 1862. 

Children : 

1471. Arthur Allen, bom at New Whatcom, Whatcom County, Wash., on 

November 2, 1892. 

1472. Emily Hannah, bom at New Whatcom, Whatcom County, Wash., on 

June 21, 1897. 

1473. William Obed, born at New Whatcom, Whatcom County, Wash., on 

May 9, 1899. 

John Milton Edson is a printer and publisher, and resides in 
New Whatcom, Whatcom County, Wash. 

1394. William Noble, son of Rufus Palen 1161 and Clara A. 
(Stimson) Edson, bom in Kalamazoo, Mich., on October 6, 1873, 
married, in Otsego, Mich., on June 30, 1896, Cora, daughter of 
Willard and Clara Martindale, bom in Otsego, Mich. 

Children : 

1474 Willard Herbert, bom in Duluth, Minn., on May 5, 1897. 

1475. Stanley Martindale, bom in Duhith, Minn., on April 28, 1899. 

William Noble Edson resides in Menominee, Mich. 

1408. Janet DeKay, daughter of Jarvis Bonesteel 1181 and 
Eliza Ward (Robins) Edson, born in Brooklyn, N. Y,, on No- 
vember 2, 1875, married, in All Angels Protestant Episcopal 
Church, New York, by the Rev. S. DeLancey Townsend, Ph.D., 
D.D., on June i, 1897, Harry Smith Kelty, son of William Miller 
and Marie Louise (Jolly) Kelty, bom in New York, N. Y., on 
November 6, 1872. (Marie Louise Jolly married (2d) Archer 
Vance Pancoast.) 

Child: 

1476. Madelon, born in New York, N. Y., on August 2, 1898 

1409. Herman Aldrich, son of Jarvis Bonesteel 1181 and 
Eliza Ward (Robins) Edson, born in Newark, N. J., on January 7, 



EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 605 

1878, married, in Jersey City, N. J., on September 14,1000, Jennie 
Finch, daughter of John D. and Emily Smith fPinch) Hutchin- 
son, born in Peekskill, N. Y., on May 14, i86c). 

UNIDENTIFIED. 

1477. Anne Edson, born on December i, 1803, married, on 
December 4, 1823, Francis PhilHps, son of Samuel, of .Vshfield. 

Children : 

1478. Julia Phillips, born on October i8, 1824. 

1479. Francis R. Phillips, born on September 27, 1S26. 

1480. John E. Phillips, born on November 12, 1829. 

1481. Ansel Elmer Phillips, born on July 26, 1836. 

1482. Eunice Lestina Phillips, born on April 11, 1840. 

1483. Lyman Silvester Edson, son of Lyman S. Edson, of 
Hamilton, Madison County, N. Y., married, in 1866, Abigail 
Maria Green, bom in Vermont, in 1845, daughter of Henry and 
Eliza Green. 

Children : 

1484. Hiram Silvester, born in Lenox, N. Y., in 1868. 

1485. Sarah, born in 187 1. 

Hiram 1484 married Isabella Nye. He is proprietor of the " Barker House," 
at Morrisville, Madison County, N. Y. 

Sarah 1485 married " Cordie Jersey." They live in Detroit, Mich. 

1486. Edson, of New York City, was a Royalist, and 

went to Nova Scotia [first to St. John, N. B. ?] when the American 
forces took possession of New York. 

Children : 
1487. Thomas: baptized in 1775 or 1776, in New York City, Trinity Church. 

He married Craine, of New Hampshire. Thomas returned 

to this country, and settled in New Hampshire. 
Child: 

1488. Thoinas: he married . 

Children : 

1489. Thomas, manager of the freight business of the Michigan 
Central Railroad, Detroit. He writes his name Ecdson. 
Salome, deceased. 
He died childless. 
He married Achsah Edna Wright. 

He was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of the 
Geneva, Conference, but retired, and was living at Newark, Wayne 
County, N. Y., at the time of his death, without issue. 

1494. Miriam, who married Hca, and died childless, long ago. Mr. Ilea 

was, at one time, M.P. in Ontario. 

1495. Emily, who married Armstead, of Klincburgh, Ontario, and died 

long ago, leaving several children. 

1496. Rebecca, who married Robert Burns, of Niagara, Ontario, and survived 

him, and is eighty-four years old. 





1490. 


1 49 1. 


Robert. 


1492. 


Elijah. 


1493- 


James L 



6o6 EDSONS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

1492. Elijah, born on land on the bank of Bear River, N. S., 
in 1812, and died about 1878. He married Achsah Edna Wright, 
formerly of Pownell, Vt., daughter of Boultwood Wright. 

Children : 

1497. John Boultwood. He enlisted, on President Lincoln's first call for 

volunteers, in the Twenty-seventh Regiment, New York Volunteer 
Infantry, Colonel Slocum, and served for two years, and was mus- 
tered out at Elmira, N. Y., in 1864, and died in the December 
following. 

1498. Albert Henry. He also enlisted, on the President's first call, in the 

Eighth Regiment, New York Volunteer Cavalry, and was killed 
at the battle of Gettysburg, July 2, 1863, and was buried in the 
Gettysburg National Cemetery. 

1499. Robert Craine. He lives at Rochester, N. Y., and has a son and a 

daughter. His mother lives with him. 

1500. Elijah, who died in infancy. 

1 501. Miriam Craine, who married and died several years ago, leaving two 

sons and one daughter, who are living. 

1502. Harriet Emeline, who has three daughters living and has lost one. 

1503. Elijah Hamlin, Rev., the youngest, born January 29, 1853, at Cleveland. 

O. In 1859 his parents removed to Rochester, N. Y., which has 
been the family home ever since. He married Mary J. Charters, 
daughter of Robert, of Rochester, and has spent most of his life 
there. He has served as a priest of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, in the Western Diocese of New York. He served as a 
missionary a:nong the Eskimo, at Point Hope, Alaska, on the shore 
of the Arctic Ocean, part of 1894, all of 1895, and part of 1896. 
He is now a missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South 
Dakota. 
Children : 
1504. Sarah Edna. 



1505 
1506 

1507 
1508 

1509 



Ruth Charters. 
Alice Cynthia. 
Robert Rankin. 
Alan Bartle. 
Paul Albert. 



Index of the Edson Surname 



No. 

Abel (Margaret Conant) 90 

Abel (Elizabeth Trask) 166 

Abi (Cyrus Howard) 577 

Abiah (Samuel Alden) 108 

Abiel (Hannah Norton) 242 

Abiel (Sarah Kibbie) 522 

Abiel (1768-) 558 

Abiezer (Sarah Lathrop, Jael 
Bennett, Mary Packard, 

Cath. Williams) iii 

Abiezer 241 

Abiezer 530 

Abigail (Josiah Perkins) 123 

Abigail (1743-48) 200 

Abigail (1752-68) 204 

Abigail (John Harris) 275 

Abigail (Azariah Willis) 341 

Abigail (1792-') 431 

Abigail ( Willis) 546 

Abigail (Ebenezer Crocker) 576 

Abigail 782 

Abigail (John H. Coon) 834 

Abijah (Susanna Snow) 137 

Abi 1 ah (Hannah Ruggles) 328 

Abner B. (1833-) 718 

Adam (Mary Hazard) 243 

Adelia (Thomas Hayes) 789 

Adelia M. (1838-92) 1 1 58 

Admiral W. (1826-44). 1177 

Agatha B. (L. H. Chandler). ... 1197 

Alan Bartle r 508 

Alanson B. (1813-) 872 

Albert (Abigail Brett) 623 

Albert B. (1869-) 1050 

Albert B. (1892-) 1347 

Albert C. (1830-50) 11 79 

Albert D. (1857-) 1430 

Albert E. 18^4-56) 1020 

Albert H. (1819-38) 827 

Albert H. ( — 1863) 1498 

Albert W. (Caroline Vaughan). . 835d 

Albertus (Sarah Colwell) 427 

Alexander (178 1-) 346 

Alexander (1780-T801) 655 

Alexander. M.D. (1804-47) ^^^'Sa 

Alexander (E. Frothingham) . . . 830 

Alexander (Abbic Maccaffil).. . . 12 11 



No. 

Alfaretta (Mr. Traub) 1401 

Alfred (Eunice Snow, Lydia 

Stewart) 383 

Alfred (1806-) 436 

Alfred l-i?,qo) S23 

Alfred (-1862) 1071 

Alfred 1078 

Alfred H. (Ella Herritage) 1258 

Alice (1866-) 1053 

Alice A 922 

Alice C 1 506 

Alice f . (1833-) 1006 

Alice M. (Edward C. Abbott) ... 1 3 1 8 

Allen (Minerva Perkins) 415 

Allen 618 

Allen O. (1880-82) . 1383 

Almira 77^ 

Alondo B. (M. E. Westcott, Nel- 
lie Lord) S44 

Alonzo J. (Cornelia E. Howe, 

Mercy M. Banks) 1099 

Althine S. (18^4; d. unm.) 833 

Alvin (Cath. H. Soley) 651 

Amanda (i8or-io) 772 

Amanda M. (b. and d. 1842).. . . iioi 
Amasa (Hannah Morton, Martha 

Morgan, Urzah Lilly) 337 

Amasii (^lary, dau. of Jacob) ... 573 

Amasa (1814-15") loio 

Amos W. (Esther Jaques) 835c 

Amphillis 15 

Amy V. (18 76-) 1049 

An(irc\v W. (Cynthia F. Paine). 1317 

Angelinc (M. L. Allison) 1085 

Angelinc A. (1845-) 1242 

Anne 5 

Anna 13 

Anna (172 3-) 136 

Anne 264 

Anna (John Winnctt) 343 

Anna (R. W. Seaver) 370 

Anna (1790-) 454 

Anne (1761-) 555 

Anne (N. Shc])ardson) 56S 

Anna (Joel Brown) 68 1 

Anne (Stephen C. Batchelder) . . 1142 

Anne (m. ) i477 



607 



6o8 



INDEX OF THE EDSON SURNAME 



No. 

Anna (John L. Worden) 1207 

Anna Cordelia (1859-) 1267 

Anna E. (Cyrus Gil:)Son) 1109 

Anna Laura (1901-) 1271 

Anne Lucia (1845-) 1273 

Annie M. (R. D. Hall) 1057 

Anne S. (1835-36) 941 

Anne S. (1840-41) 944 

{See Hannah — the Hebrew form.) 

Annette B. (Edgar Palmer) 1407 

Anthia (1791-) 602 

Ara Otis (1856-) 835i 

Archie G. (1865-) 1230 

Ard (1792-) 625 

Arminda (A. Sornberger) 764 

Arthur A. (1892-) 147 1 

Asahel (Fanny Stetson) 406 

Asenath (1800-) 434 

Asenath (-1S21) 82 1 

Azelia (Wm. C. Henry) 1084 

Barnabas (1757; d. in P.evo- 

lution) 219 

Barnabas (Anna Walsworth) . . . 384 

Barnabas (Elizabeth Gurney) . . 514 

Barnabas (1846-) IT15 

Barnabas H. (Julia M. Ames) .. . 760 

Barzillai (Anne ) 850 

Benjamin (Joanna Orcutt) 64 

Benjamin (Anne Thayer) 114 

Benjamin (Deborah Perkins). . . 1S6 
Benjamin (Dinah Washbiirn, 

Anna Johnson) 281 

Benjamin '(178S-1818) 414 

Benjamin (1759-) 554 

Benjam.in (1837-) Sio 

Benjamin (Mary Waters) 951 

Benjamin C. (1804-) 425 

Bernardine R. (1875-) 1282 

Bernice (1896-) 1461 

Bethiah (Ezra Dean) 26 

Bethiah (m. ) 86 

Bethiah (Jonathan Whitman).. . loi 

Bethiah (Consider Borden) 168 

Bradford G. (i8ot; unm.) 536 

Burtis S. (Agnes B. Thompson).. 1350 

C. P. (sonof Thoinas, 729, p. 512) 

Caleb (1739-54) 231 

Caleb (Sarah Dean) 262 

Caleb (1769-70) 391 

Caleb (1761-) 518 

Calvin (b. and d. 1743) 233 

Calvin (Lydia Conant) 259 

Calvnn (Charity Thompson, Az- 

uba Greene) 322 

Calvin CDorothy May) 386 

Calvin (Martha Dunbar, Rebecca 

Crosby) 545 

Calvin (179T : d. tmm.) 654 

Calvin (1788-) 665 

Calvin (Margaret Vredenburgh) . 765 



No. 
Calvin Riley (1832-80, son of 
Calvin, ^765, p. 515) 

Calvin R. (1852-79) 1 133 

Caroline (• — Hill) 597 

Caroline A. (1856-) 1 106 

Caroline H. (1832-) 939 

Carroll A 1452 

Catharine H. (1864-67) 1278 

Catharine H. (1896-) 1465 

Catharine M. (Gilbert Thompson) 1352 

Catharine T. (1837--) 1022 

Catharine Z. (Francis Davis) . . . 1204 
Catharine. See "Trine." 

Charles 450 

Charles. 537 

Charles (1827-53) 738* 

Charles 1240 

Charles A. (1840-64) 1024 

Charles A. (1863-66) 1054 

Charles C. (1843-) 1272 

Charles E. (Martha Beckley). . . 840 - 

Charles H. (Mary M. Harris) .... 1042 

Charles H.(i856-) 1259 

Charles L. (1870-) 1232 

Charles L. (18S1-) 134^ 

Charles M. (1836-38) 1021 

Charles P. (Amy C. Fox) 426 

Charles W '. under 603 

Charles W. (1836-54) 817 

Charlotte (i 786-1863) 540 

Charlotte 752 

Chauncey C. (185 1-) 12 10 

Chauncev P. (Rebecca La Rvie) . 982 

Chelotts (Juliana Bloomfield) ... 353 

Chellus. 'See "Chelous" 353 

Chester (Mary Fuller) 356 

Chester (Mary Wilder) 680 

Chloe (1770-) 342 

Chloe Ellen (1848-54) 1248 

Christiana 4 

Clara Belle (1896-) 1270 

Clarissa 795 

Clarissa (Luke White) 825 

Clarissa A. (David H. Ames). . . . 762 

Clark (18^6-38) 1 1 57 

Clement M. (181 1-) 798 

Clinton H. (1867-) 1365 

Columbus (-18S0; unm.) 355 

Constance de C. (1886-) 1208 

Constance de O. (1886-) 1418 

Cora (d. in inf.) 1388 

Cornelius W. (1S09-) 635 

Cromwell 622 

Curtis (d. ttnm.) 792 

Curtis G. (Ella Cunningham) . . . 1349 

Curtis N. (1845-47) 1 163 

Ctishman (1763-97) 669 

Cynthia (Elkanah Blakesle) 350 

Cynthia (1789-) 601 

Cyrenus C. (Huldah Nichols).. . . 761 
Cvrus (Hannah Hudson, Laura 

A. Smith) 196 



INDEX TO THE EDSON SURNAiME 



609 



No. 

Cyms (i 7g8-) 43;, 

Cyrus (S. Wilcox, A. French) ... 456 

Cyrus 523 

Cyrus (b. and d. 17S7) 600 

Cyrus (-1S21) 820 

Cyrus (Martha D. Nelson) S28 

Cyrus (Mary E. Van Velsor) .... 1216 

Dallas, M. (1845-63) 1105 

Damon (Aressa M. ) 854 

Daniel (1720-) 103 

Daniel (17 56-) 169 

Daiu'el (Olive Fuller) igq 

Daniel (b. and d. 1747) 2z\ 

Daniel 260 

Daniel 52S 

Daniel (1798-) 588 

Daniel j 092 

Daniel S. (Doroth)' Goodale) . . . 663 

Daniel S. (Martha Ilalverson) . 997 

Daniel Shcrod (1866-70) 1301 

Darwin N. (Hannah Bliss) 788 

David rSusanna Ga,nnett, S. 

Southworth) 104 

David(Lydia Shaw, Lydia Bas- 

settj 210 

David (Clintha Sylvester, M. 

FuUerton) 486 

David 572 

David Orr (1S62-) 1218 

Delana (William Hubbell, 

Goodrich) 351 

Delana (183 1-) 717 

Desiah 786 

Dinah (1784-) 5<jo 

Dorcas (B. Saxbury, Josejih 

Howe) 505 

Dorothy A. (Geo. W. Lowell). . . . 998 

R. Annette (1836-'^ 1007 

E. R., grandson of Calvin (p. 5 15) 

F:bcn b ■ 780 

Ebenezer (Jane Grilhn, Mrs. H. 

Leach) 94 

Ebenezer (Lucy Packard, Mary 

Warren) 121 

Ebenezer (1772-) 194 

Ebenezer (Martha Fobes) 287 

Eber (1835-) 7^9 

Edith (1870-) 1220 

Ivdilli 14 1 9 

Edith L 1451 

Edna (James Hewlett) 591 

Edward (1819-) 1012 

Edward (1843-52) 1 162 

Edward D. (1870-") i ■^g^ 

Edwin (187S-) T'367 

Edwin H. (C. L. McCullou>,'h) . . 1107 

Edwin T. (1848-56) 1026 

Elam (1789-) 592 

Elbert (1854-) 1117 

Eleanor (John T. Greene) 653 



Llecta (|(jhn P. Edson) 

Electa P. (Andrew W. Bigelow, 

Sam M. Bigelow) 

Elial) (Prudence Whiltaker) . ... 

Fliab (1792-1832) 

Flic Charlier (J. V. D. Stacey) . 

Elie Charlier (1882-) 

I'^lijah (Anne Packard) 

Elijah (Nancy Clark, Martha 

AVashbiu-n) . 



El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 
E! 
El 
El 
El 
El 
El 



jah (Nancy ('lark) 

iah (Dencv White) 

lah (1ST7--) 

.iah (Ach.sah E. Wright) 

iah (d. in inf.) . . , 

J ah H., Rev. (M. J. Chartrcs). 
phalet (Mary L. Johnson). ... 

za (H. Warren).". 

za i 

za (1845-) 

za 

za (N. Brigham) 

za (1S31-57) 

za C. ( Harder) 

zabeth 

zabeth (Richard Phillips) .... 
zabeth (Samuel Packard) .... 
zabeth (Benanuel Leach).. . . 

zabeth (Andrew White) 

zabeth (Rudolphus Borden).. 

zabeth ( Lilly, Zelotes 

Lewis) . 



Elizabeth (Joel Shedd) . 
Elizabeth (Joseph Rice). 
Elizabeth (John Pratt) . 

Elizabeth ( Nye, - 

Bruce) 



Fvlizabeth (1792-) 

Elizabeth (i 781-92) 

Elizabn-th (1764-) 

Elizabeth (1794-) 

Eliza !)eth (Hiram Webb) 

Elizabeth (1797-) 

Elizabeth (Rev. Geo. 11. Wil- 
liams) 

Elizabeth (186S-) 

Elizabeth (-1884) 

Elizabeth (Charles M. Rich). ... 
Elizabeth A. (Anciel Foster)... . 
Elizabeth H. (josiah Kingman). 

Elizal>eth ]. (i"82i-5i) 

Elizabeth "M. (Asa C. Finnev) . . 

Elizabeth M. (1826-) '. . . . 

Elizabeth O. (Chas. Thompson). 

Elizabcih R. (1S03; d. y.) 

Elizabeth S. (Frank lligginsV. . 

Ella (l86I-7c)^ '.T 

Ella E. (Edw. T. Adams) 

Ellen 

Ellen (18^9-85) 

ElkMi .\. (iS5^-<;7'>.. 

Fllen A. (trOine- H. Paine) 



No., 
678 

lOI I 

3'M 

667 

120S 

1417 

113 

2 58 

362 

67.S 

849 

1492 

1500 

^503 

339 
491 

533 

724 

926 

961 

1018 

"75 

7 

2] 

5c 

92 

155 
1 70 

35^ 
368 

411 

535 

548 
566 
652 
656 
668 
679 
686 

971 
1056 

1075 
1 103 

1098 

^34 
967a 
69S 
814 
503 

1 165 

'-•74 
1360 
1076 

Ti '3 
1 1 1 2 

' > I 3 



6io 



INDEX TO THE EDSON SURNAME 



No. 

Ellen E. (1875-87) 1382 

Elmer B under 603 

Elva (1857-) 1118 

Emeline (Elmer H. Garbutt) .... 697 

Emergene (Jas. PI. Henry) 1086 

Emily (Caleb A. Stratton) 6q2 

Emily .' 856 

Emily (Edw. E. Bennett) 862 

Emily ( Armstead) 1.^95 

Emily B. (1838-41) 943 

Emily D. (Garry Stellson, Ly- 
man Treadwell) 965 

Emily D. (1839-40) 1245 

Emily H. (1897-) 1472 

Emilv J. (Douglas Bushnell, 

Miles Henry) 969 

Emily M. (vSimeon B. Cotm) .... 816 

Emily M. (1842-) 1246 

Emma (1S52-53) 83511 

Emma C. (185 1-) 1043 

Emma C. (1860-99) 1199 

Ephraim (Mary Howard) 363 

Ephraim (1781-1851; unm.).... 534 

Ephraim D. (M. Ferguson) 743 

Esther (David Hartson) 357 

Esther (1795-) 422 

Esther (Ambrose Kingman) .... 515 

Ethel T. (Arthur Van Brunt) .... 1222 

Ethel W. (1883-86) 1410 

Eugene 1238 

Eunice (John Chamberlain) 152 

Eunice (Richard Thayer) 307 

Eunice ( Gregg) 745 

Eunice 785 

Eunice 932 

Eurene (1775-) '^61 

Eveline C. (1856-) 1398 

Evelyn (1890-) 1414 

Experience (1695; d. y.) 63 

Ezra (Rebecca Johnson) 96 

Ezra (Asenath Perkins) 189 

Ezra (1808-) 437 

Ezra (Eliza Wentworth) 449 

Ezra (Angeline Washburn) 460 

Ezra (-1884) 824 

Ezra F. (1825-27) 829 

FideUa (1817-) 638 

Fidelia (1830-) 716 

Fidelia io77 

Flora E. (Albert Gates) 1389 

Florence (r86i; d. y.) 1206 

Florence (1883-91) 1424 

Florentia 1090 

Frances (1785-) 495 

Frances (L. F. Van Detisen, 

Thos. Manchester) 1 140 

Frances A. (Horace Potter") 779 

Frances A. (i860-) 1376 

Frances B. (Levi B. Parker) 731 

Frances C. (1900-) 1420 

Frances F. (Edw. M. Rcid) 1185 



No. 

Frances F. (Abner L. Ely) 1212 

Frances U. (Henry Silvcrster) ... 1 148 

Francis (b. and d. 1869) 1280 

Francis (1859-) 143 1 

Francis A. (1879-) '395 

Francis C. (1868-) 1231 

Francis P. (Margaret E. Baird) . 1198 

Franklin (Fanny C. Wood) 832 

Franklin (E. M. Squierl 1217 

Franklin C. (1882-) . . .' 1422 

Franklin Diehl 1428 

Franklin E. (1S58-) 1 135 

Frederick C. (1877-) 1052 

Frederick C. (1S59-) 1277 

Frederick D. (m. ) 1390 

Frederick K. (1886-) 1345 

Freelove {Josiah Fol)es) 112 

Freeman (Judith Mason, Mary 

Hanford, T. O. Goodrich) . . 349 

Freeman M 696 

Freeman W. (Sarah Sheldon).. 598 

Galen (1788-) 429 

Galen (Mary A. Oliver) 569 

Galen (— . 1813) 818 

Galen (Harriet Wash) 940 

Galen K. (Lucy Hudson) 461 

Galen R. (1845-) ^4^ 

Gamaliel (Hannah Boylan) 757 

George ■ . . . 532 

George 606 

George (Mary A. Weld) 734 

George 931 

George A. (Marion C. Carlett) . . . 1351 

George C, Rev. (1. Campbell). . 1392 

George D. (L G. Kimball) 967 

George F. (182 9-) 815 

George F. (1816-) 873 

George H. (r 82 6-65) 1016 

George T. (1859-61) 1264 

George T. (1884-) 1344 

George W. (Adelaide Drew). ... 11 14 

Grant W. (Bernice Strong) 1364 

Gridley G. (1854-67) 1134 

Gviy (Rhoda Packard) 603 

Hadley J. (1851-) 842 

Hanford, Abram, Rev 699 

Hannah ( 1 709-) 98 

Hannah (Micali Allen, Thos. 

Phillips) 134 

Hannah (S. Packard") 195 

Hannah (Paul Belden) 334 

Hannah (1770-) 392 

Hannah (Pomeroy Noble) 399 

Hannah fi8o2-) 455 

Hannah (1784-85) 479 

Hannah (John vSmith) 484 

Hannah (1781-) 642 

Hannah (Norman Goodale) 676 

Hannah (Reuben Peck) 694 

Hannah (1830-) 960 



INDEX TO THE EDSON SURNAME 



6ii 



No. 

Hannah 1 380 

Hannah A. (Increase Robin- 
son) 412 

Hannah C 1 166 

Hannah W. (Marquis Tennt-y) . . . 838 

Harlcy (Phicbe Heath) 604 

Harriet 923 

Harriet (1838-) 1293 

Harriet A. (MiUon Hyde) 662 

Harriet E. (m. ) 150- 

Harriet L. (1870-) 1233 

Harriett (Lucius Mathewson). . . 1366 

Harriett A. (Andrew Murdock) . Sg6 
Harris (Mary Thacher, Emilv 

Thachcr) '. 688 

Helen A. (H. S. Dewell) i2g8 

Helen A. (1862-) 142 -, 

Helen B. (1893-) ^4^5 

Helen W 1 4 1 S 

Henriette A. (1S88-) 1346 

Henriette D. (1867-69) ^279 

Henry (E. N. Little) 358 

Henry 531 

Henry (Mary A. Stetson) 732 

Henry (Clarissa Capron) 1009 

Henry 1023 

Henry 1239 

Henr}^ A. (1847-70) 1182 

Henry L. (187 1-) 1234 

Henry L. (Lucy Steele) 1312 

Henry S. (Alta N. Terry) 952 

Henry T. (Susan D. Diehl) 12 19 

Henrv W. (Mehetabel Oreutt) . . 748 

Herbert G. (1882-) 119s 

Herbert H. (1867-) 1403 

Herbert W. (1808-) T173 

Herman A. (J. Hutchinson). . . . i40() 

Hiraiu 609 

Hiram (Chloe Motilton) 924 

Hiram A. (Jane Cook) 947 

Hiram S. (Mary Van Deuscn) . . 1138 

Hiram S. (Isabella Nye) 1484 

Horace W. (1896-) 14 16 

Horatio (1820-) 639 

Hosea 261 

Hosea (1789-) 348 

Huldah (Hezekiah Hayward).. . no 

Huldah (Thomas Pope ) 158 

Huldah (Benj. Death) 20S 

Huldah (1774-93) 311 

Ihildah (r 748-49) 318 

Huldah (Peter Edson) 320 

Huldah (1793-) 5S7 

Ichabod (Jemima Packard) 120 

Ida Marian (r863-) 1266 

Irene (1765-) 283 

Irene (Joseph Sheldon) 593 

Isaac (1758-) 182 

Isaac (Sarah ) 472 

Isaac C. (Lydia A. Crofut, Sarah 

Knowlton) 964 



No. 

Isaac G. u«-l8-5i) 835b 

Isabelle (1865-7 i) 1402 

Isaiah (1750-53) 203 

Isaiah (1769—) 470 

Isaiah (1781-) 477 



Jacob (1722; d. y.) 117 

Jacob (Elizabeth Packard) 269 

Jacob (1 799-) , •. • 364 

Jacob ( Lee, Soi)]n"i)nia 

Bowen) 480 

Jacob (Eunice Bradley) 557 

Jacob 564 

Jacob P. (1828-49) 1178 

James (Esther Allen, VAiz. Wash- 
burn) xo6 

James (1750-69) 217 

James (1795-) 483 

J ames 527 

James 611 

James (1824-26) 733 

James (Charlotte Curtis) 899 

James B. (Emma Thomas. Mercy 

M. Banks) ". 1089 

James L. (went to Mich.) 758 

James L., Rev ^493 

James L. F. (Julia Collins) 1102 

James L. F. (b. and d. 1866) ... 1361 

James O. (1878-) 1341 

Jane (1778-) 345 

Jane (George Smith) 958 

Janet (Seth Kingman) 277 

Janet D. (Harry'S. Kelty) 1408 

Jarvis B. (Eliza W. Robins) 1 181 

Jennie S. (1858-) 1045 

Jerah (Sophia Stiles) 687 

Jerah (Mary H. Whcatley) 10 14 

Jesse (Lydia Titus, Rebecca 

Belcher) 105 

Jesse (Susanna Hayward) 174 

Jesse (r 764-68) 215 

Jesse (Rebecca Taylor) 393 

"esse (Anne Williams) 493 

oanna (Isaac Perkins) 122 

oanna (1754-) 279 

oanna (Thomas Packard) 2S5 

Joanna (1767-1S46) 30S 

Joanna (1801-18) 451 

Joanna (181 r-) 636 

Joanna (1820-21) 835 

Joanna (Silas Rider) 054 

Joel (Lucy Leonard) 246 

Joel (Hannah Packard, Lurana 

Jones) 306 

Joel (b. and d. 1797) 627 

John (Hamiah Allen) 95 

John (Marv (lannett) 102 

Jolui (Tabitha Keen) 185 

b'liii (Judith Shaw) 202 

Jolni (Susannah Oreutt) 214 

John (1746-49) 317 

John (1750-75I 319 



6l2 



INDEX TO THE EDSON SURNAME 



John (Sarah - 



Clarissa • 



(Mary Bass). 

(1 787-) 



U776-) ■ 

(Emily P. Clemens) 

(1829-56) 

(1827-57) 

(1S12-) 

(i8:,7-) 

(Sadie F. Barnes) . . 



John 
John 
John 
John 
John 
John 
John 
John 
John 

f ohn 

John B. (-1864) 

Jt)hn G. (Sarah M. Taylor) 

John H. (Ehzabeth Clark) 

John Joy (vSarah Barnes) 

John Joy (1846-) 

John L. (Margaret Chaclwick) . . 
"f(jhn M. (Hannah Alverson) .... 

John M. (Eliz. Swails) 

John M I 

John M. (Alma B. Green) 

John Milton (1842-62) 

John Pember (under Electa 

John T. (Winona Charlier) 

John Wesley (1834-; m. ) . 

Jonah (Elizabeth Balch) 

Jonah (Janet Bryant) 

Jonathan (M. Lilly) 

Jonathan (1761-68) 

Jonathan (Rebecca Graves) .... 
Jonathan (1783-1863; unm.) — 

Jonathan (Mary 689) 

Joseph (Experience Field, Mary 

Turner) 

Joseph (Lydia Cary) '. . . . . 

Joseph (Abigail Forrest) 

Joseph (Mary Vinal) 

Joseph (Cynthia ) 

Joseph (Sarah Throop) 

Joseph (18 2 7-) 

Joseph (1819-48: unm.) 

Joseph C. (1S18-43) 

Joseph H. (1S35-57) 

Joseph J. (Mary Munger) 

Joseph L 

Joseph Romanzo (1S47-) 

Joshua 

Joshua (Clarissa C. Osborn) .... 

Jo,siah (Elizabeth Dean) 

Josiah (Sarah Packard, Abigail 

Dean) 

Josiah (Ruth Bailey, Mary 

Parker, Abigail Dean) 

Josiah (Reliance Fuller) 

josiah (Hannah Lawrence) 

Josiah (Sarah Pimney) 

Josiah (Martha Stcbbins) 

Josiah (Susanna Richards) 

Josiah 

Josiah (Elizabeth ) 

Josiah (Rosabelle S. Rider) 



No. 
381 

413 
419 
526 
640 
649 

73 5 
806 

847 
942 

105 I 

1068 

1497 
766 
970 
661 

1294 

T 190 

778 
1143 
375a 

1377 
T 104 
678) 
1208 
II80 
154 

138 
21 T 

333 
485 
68.^, 



24 

61 

100 

213 
482 
656 

853 
978 

963 
1144 

984 

855 
1295 

17 
917 

25 



109 
218 
230 

323 
502 

519 
529 
6.;8 
812 



No. 

Josiah (Elvirah Sharp) 898 

Josiah B. (1862-) 1244 

Julia (1793-) 596 

Juliaette (1839-) 721 

Julia H. (1881-) 1324 

Julia 1. (Harry S. Hamilton). . . 1172 

Julia M 1073 

Julia O 1 209 

Justus (Mary Paine, Cham- 
berlain) 673 

Keturah (i 752-) 178 

Keturah (Willis Howe) 396 

Keziah (1758-) 171 

Keziah (John Harkness) 270 

Lafayette E. (1837-) 720 

Lavina (EphraJm Spraguc) 192 

Layina (Samuel Perkins) 289 

Lavina (1794—) 432 

Lavina 753 

Lavina ( Allen) 819 

Lavina (1S60-) 1400 

Lavinia (D wight Smith) 928 

Lavinia (-1S77) 1072 

Lebbn?us (Joanna Keen) 193 

Lcona A. (1855-) 1202 

Leonard (R. Woodward) 647 

Levi (Sarah Hay ward) 167 

Levi (Mary A¥ashburn) 278 

Levi (177S-) 562 

Levi (1784-) 582 

Lewis (Hepzibah Washburn) ... 177 
Lewis (Elizabeth Beebe, Orilla 

Mead) 402 

Lewis A. (1892-) 1462 

Lewis E under 603 

Lewis G. (1824—49) 1176 

Lewis M. (Sarah Flint) 759 

Lewis M. (b. and d. 182 1) 1174 

Lewis. See " Louis." 

Lilian E. (Frank C. Baldwin) . . . 1362 

Linus 677 

Lois (Jacob Staples) 153 

Lois M. (1843-) 1 108 

Loring (i 795-1800) 918 

Loring A. (Harriet Story) 921 

Louis L. F. (1S74-76) 1363 

Louisa (b. and d. 185 1) S35g 

Lucia E. (1887-) ' 1236 

Lucian (1840-42) 836 

Lucian 837 

Lucinda (Ziba B. Bryant) 695 

Lucinda (William Devine, D. D. 
Bartholomew, Rev. Wil- 
liam Spencer) 763 

Lucius (1797-) 423 

Lucius (Matilda Ainsworth) .... 685 

Lucy (Alex. Thayer) 288. 

Lucy (Elam Willis) 401 

Lucy (1788; d. in inf.) 585 

Lucy (1791-) 5S6 



INDEX TO THE EDSON SURNAME 



613 



No. 

Lucy 617 

Lucy 784 

Lucy (Elias Balcomc) 852 

Lucy J. ( 1 860-1 900) 1 136 

Lucy J. (Geo. D. Carnes) 1114 

Lucy M. (1857-) 843 

Litcy V. (Theodore Sedi:;el)ur) ... 767 

Luna (unni.) 65b 

lyura (Spencer Graves) 691 

Luther 608 

Luther (1785-1856; unm.) 648 

Lydia (17 11-93) 99 

Lydia (1754-) 180 

Lydia 310 

Lydia 325 

Lydia (1793-) 48S 

Lydia (Thomas Conant) 547 

Lydia (1784-1801) 657 

Lvdia 751 

Lydia (vSeth Rowland) 848 

Lydia (Wm. Raymond) 962 

LycHa A. (Ebenezer Smith) 664 

Lyman ( 1800-) 589 

Lyman S. (Abigail M. Green).. . 1483 

Mabel 1434 

Mabel Drew (1878-) 1375 

Mabel F. (187 1-) 1048 

Marcia L. (1858-61) 13 1 Q 

Margaret 3 

Margaret (1S93-) 141 2 

Margaret O. (1888-) 1325 

Mark (Emma [. Leavitt) 80S 

Marmont B. (M. B. Bonesteel) . . 799 

Marmont (18S8-) 141 1 

Marshall 268 

Marshall (1821-58) 10T3 

Marshall L. (18 so-) 1005 

Marshall O. (AVwv II. Wanlm) . . 1321 

Martha (Daniel Carr) 150 

Martha (Phihp Packard) 274 

Martha (1772-) 473 

Martha ("Patty") 578 

Martha 620 

Martha (r829-44) 739 

Martha A. (Freeman A. Crafts) . 1025 

Martha A. (Milan Stedwcll) .... 1297 

Martha L. (1840-47) 1 146 

Martha M. (1828-31) 1017 

Martin (1790-) 420 

Martin (i 794-) 594 

Martin A. (Anne Mead) 953 

Marv (.Nicholas Bvram) 23 

Mary ( fohn Lathn)])"! 66 

Mar'y (Gc-o. Packard, j.-lin Me- 

hurin) 87 

Mary (Seth Johnson) .. . 130 

Maiy (James Snow) .... 162 

Mary (Robert Wade) 190 

Mary (1746-53) 201 

Mary (Jonathan Crane) 235 

Mary (Ebenezer Johnson) 327 



No. 
Mary ( Rogers, John Bard- 

wt-11) 338 

Mary (John Devine, Daniel 

Thurston, Michael Tooke) . . 385 

Mary (L Marvin) 403 

Mary (John Bi.sbec) 474 

Mary (Daniel Burrill) 400 

Marv 525 

Mary (Jacob I'uiler, llol- 

brook) 567 

Mary (1785-) 583 

Mary ( Moflit) 599 

Marv (fonathan 683) 689 

Mary ("1S36-) ' 742 

Mary (J. W. Rosecrance) 756 

Mary (Oliver E. Cvi.shing) 807 

Mary (1845-47) 946 

Mary (18x5-) 955 

Mary (1833-34) 1019 

Mary (1865-84) 1055 

Mary (188S-) 1196 

Mar}' A. (l8 19-90; unm.) 800 

Mary A 927 

Mary A. (1S24-28) 936 

Mary A. (1830-32) 93S 

Mary A. (T.'W.'Stobridge) 979 

Mary A. (Walter C. Shaw) 1044 

Mary A. (Frank W. Smith) 1359 

Marv A. S. (1845-46) i 247 

Marv C ' 802 

Mary C. (i860-) 1265 

Mary D. (Geo. B. Damon) 1058 

Mary E. (1847-) 725 

Mary E. (Louis Ilallett) 1302- 

Mary E. (b. and d. 1S59) ^35^- 

Mary F. (1860-71). . . '. 1320 

Marv G. (T832-) i 100 

Mary G. (1S49-) i 1S3 

Mary (^i. (W. R. Scrimgeour) . . . 1268 

]\Iar)- II. (Jas. Wildey) 1391 

Mary Jane 839 

Mary Jane (Jdhn R. Beck, Dan. 

Spencer) 1 292 

Mary L. ( 1859-) 1 260 

Mary Louise (187 i-) i 2S1 

Mary Louise (1900-) 1 45S 

Mary Randall 579 

Mary S. (Arthur Miller) 1250 

Mary U. ( 1S65-72) 1370 

Marv V. (1897-) 1413 

Matilda (1849-) 726 

Matilda G. (Wilson Morse) 900 

Mehetabel ( 1 750-5 1) 206 

Mehetabel (Benjamin (Mark)... . 207 

Mehetabel (1760-) 305 

Mehetabel (Ma'liii Crax-es) 332 

Mehetabel 421 

Mehetabel (Nehemiah Lincoln).. 4S0 
Mehetabel W. . 5S0 

Melinda ( 1S02-) .J35 

Melinda (1804-) 571 

.Melinda ('\<^}'^ S.v 



6i4 



INDEX TO THE EDSON SURNAME 



No. 

Melinda A. (1864-) 1300 

Melinda D. (H. E. Adams) 831 

Melvin (b. and d. 1S07) 458 

Melvin (Helen Harris) 835a 

Melzar (1807-) 457 

Mertelle M. (1868-84) i439 

Milly (Hosea Alden) 574 

Milton L 796 

Milton L. (187 5-; m. ) .... 140S 

Minerva (1789-) 644 

Miriam (Samuel) 339 

Miriam ( 1 7 78-) 646 

Miriam (Isaac Reed) 649 

Miriam ( Hea) i494 

Miriam Craine (m. ) 1501 

Montrose ([845-) 10S3 

Mjn-a (iS66-)." 1189 

Myron (1850-63) 1116 

Nathan (Mary Sprague) 89 

Nathan (171S-; d. y.) 115 

Nathan (Mary Hall) 160 

Nathan (Susanna Alien) 286 

Nathan (1750-1828) 329 

Nathan (1806-25) 367 

Nathan ( White) 380 

Nathan 610 

Nathan 619 

Nathan (Eunice A. Ryder) 740 

Nathaniel (Joanna Snow) 125 

Nathaniel (1769-70) 309 

Nathaniel (Elizabeth Hay ward), 312 

Nathaniel (1805-) '. 633 

Nathaniel ([765-) 670 

Nathaniel (1808-53; unm.) 973 

Nchemiah (Olive Perkins) 187 

Nehemiah (1802-) 424 

Nehemiah S. (Parnel ) 481 

Nellie M. (1S66-) 1046 

Neva (1S97-) 1459 

Newton (1814-) 637 

Nicholas 8 

Nicholas (1607-8) 14 

Nina Marie (1891-) 1460 

Noah (Elizabeth Richards, Mary 

Willis, Keziah Howard 157 

Noah (Huldah Kingman) 360 

Obed (Keturah Willis, Martha 

Thomas) 91 

Obed (b. and d. 1742) 173 

01)cd (Prudence Fiske, Sarah 

) 176 

Obed (Aurora Higgins, Fanny 

Bigelow) 395 

Obed (Sarah Scott) 777 

Obed (Emily A. Allen) t i 47 

Olive (Salmon Rickard) 265 

Olive (Thomas Smith") 336 

Olive (Zenas Cole) 388 

Olive (vSeth Tififany) 308 

Olive (Jacob Noyes) 517 



No. 

OHve (J. S. Van Alstine) 783 

Olive (Titus Eastman) 920 

Olive 1079 

Oliver (1784-) 347 

Oliver 524 

Oliver 542 

Oliver (1789-) 666 

Oliver (1796-; d. imm.) 690 

Ohver C. (1843-) 1082 

Oliver S. (Henrietta Alden) 750 

Olivia C. (John A. Wilson) 975 

Ophir (Clarissa Shurtleflf, Soviah 

Williams) 430 

Oramel (Mrs. Lydia Wells) 408 

Orcutt (1787-) 496 

Oris (Irene Markham) 499 

Orizon V. (187 2-; m. ) .... 1405 

Orrin 605 

Orrin (Orilla Booth) 650 

Osander (Marcia Johnson) 498 

Oscar M. (Minnie Karn) ^3°3 

Othniel W. (Martha Pulsipher, 

Elizabeth Andrews) 826 

Otis A. (1S90-) 1237 

Otis Hudson (Anne Berry) 462 

Oza (1793-) 500 

Packard (Lucinda Howe) 497 

Pascal P. (E. Hazard) 968 

Paul Albert 1 509 

Pearl P 1449 

Perley (185 2-) 727 

Peter (Sarah Southworth) 116 

Peter (Rebecca Randall) 290 

Peter (under Huldah 320) 

Phiebe (Ira Bryant) 570 

Phiebe (David Blatchley) 607 

Philander (1828-) ". 715 

Pliny (i 790-93) 624 

Pliny (Lucy Reed, Mehetabel 

Reed) 626 

Polycarpus (L\icy Eaton) 245 

Prudence (Daniel Burhans) 394 

Ptolemy O. (1785-) 418 

Rachel (1744-) 165 

Rachel (1843-) 723 

Rebecca (Amos Fisher) 191 

Rebecca (Ezekiel Reed) 216 

P,.ebecca (1798-) 453 

Rebecca (Ebcnezcr Alger) 492 

Rebecca (i 799-1805) 771 

Rebecca 1496 

Reliance (Toel Ames) 516 

Relief (Oliver Packard) 284 

Relief (Sylvanus Bloggett) 326 

Reulien (1769-) 471 

Rhoda (Aaron Heath) 280 

Richard (Agnes ) 2 

R.ichard 

Robert (Mary Hay ward) 188 

RoVjert 271 



INDEX TO THE EDSOX SURNAME 



615 



No. 

Robert, U 790-) 5^'5 

Robert 1070 

Robert 1 49 1 

Robert Craine (m. — ) ^499 

Robert D. (iSj^-So) 1396 

Robert Rankin 1507 

Robert S 746 

Robert S. (Fanny Ropes) 122 i 

Rodolphiis (Lydia Crane) 244 

Rosa Valerie (1869-) 1404 

Rosalie 1091 

Rose A. (Aaron J. Nichols, jas. 

W. Heline) 1 2 9() 

Rosalie A. (Wm. Stone) 1440 

Rowena 770 

Rowena (John L. Stevens) 1087 

Royal (1784-85) 539 

Royal (Levina Rose) 930 

Royal (Adeline Arnold) 974 

Ruby (Samuel Speer) 575 

Rudolphus 755 

Ruel (1S22-) 851 

Rufus (]Mary Cole) 172 

Patfus 610 

Rufus (1820-) 956 

Rufus P. (Clara A. Stimson, 

Jennie Dunoon) 1 161 

Ruth (1741-56) 232 

Ruth 267 

Ruth (1778-) 476 

Ruth (1886-) 1425 

Ruth Charters i 505 

Salmon (Mehctabcl Brett, Me- 

hetabel Hay ward) 65 

Salmon (Mary White) 682 

Samuel (Susanna Orcutt) 16 

Samuel (Susanna Byram) 22 

Samuel (Mary Dean) 51 

Samuel (Martha Perkins) SS 

Samuel (1722-1800; d. unm.)... 124 

Samuc'l (Anna Hall) 151 

Samuel (1752-) 3.1° 

Samuel (Miriam Edson") ;^T,q 

Samuel (Hannah Ripley, Mary 

Barnes) 344 

Samuel (Mary M. Burr) 809 

Samuel loSo 

Samuel 1191 

Samuel A. ( 1863-72) 1378 

Samuel B. (b. and d. 1854^ 1261 

Samuel S. (Mary Grei'u) 754 

Sarah (John Dean) 20 

Sarah (John Cnojier) 07 

Sarah (Elisha Pierce) 107 

Sarah (Timothy Richards) .... 156 

Sarah (Madison Abby) i ()o 

Sarah (Solomon Perkins) 161 

Sarah (Jeremiah Washburnl . . i()7 

Sarah (1739-75) i<>8 

Sarah (1757-68) 201) 

Sarah (Russell Allis) :!3 5 



No. 

Sarah (William Devine) 3S7 

Sarah (i 795-1803) 409 

Sarah (1776-) 475 

Sarah (1791-) 487 

Sarah (Benjamin Keith) 494 

Sarah (Ira ilayward) 513 

Sarah (Zachariah Eddy) 538 

Sarah 541 

Sarah (1772-) 560 

Sarah (Nathaniel Shepardson) . . 563 

Sarah (178 7-) 584 

Sarah (Parker Whitney) 659 

Sarah 674 

Sarah ( 1 84 1-) 722 

Sarah 747 

Sarah (Edward Norton) 835b 

Sarah (Edmund Weston) 972 

Sarah 1 08 1 

Sarah (1834-) 1291 

Sarah ("Cordie Jersey") 14S5 

Sarah A. (1830-) 999 

Sarah E. (1893-) 1269 

Sarah Edna 1 504 

Sarah H. (Amos Dunbar) 807 

Sarah H. (David McClaren) 11 1 1 

Sarah L. (1849-) 1296 

Sarah M. (R. S. Hughston) 791 

Sarah M. (1839-42) i 160 

Sarah P. (1819-71; m. and div.) 983 

Scth (Irene Howard) 119 

Seth (Theodora Howard) 273 

Seth (Desire Comstock) 282 

Seth (Caroline A. Blake) 937 

Seth (1827-) 959 

vSeth B. (Elizabeth Brvant) 737 

Seth B. (1S57-) ■ 1263 

She]>ar<l (1810-44) looS 

Siln-l (Zeno Bensen) 744 

Sil)vl (1846-47) S35e 

Silas D. (S. P. Saunders) 025 

Silas II. (Carrie McCuUoujjh 1110 
Silence (Nehemiah Packan], Jo- 

.siah Dunbar) 03 

Silence (James Tur]>\vell) 181 

Silence 1069 

Silence 1490 

Silvanus 354 

Silvester 263 

Silvia (17S2-) 47'*^ 

.Silvia 857 

Simci.n (Alice Brvant, Lvdia 

Cheedle. Sarah CheedleV. .... 30(1 

Simeon (i 7 70-) 55Q 

Sojthia (Horatio Crane. Simon 

Cotton) 684 

So])hia ( r 82 7-53) 1015 

So]iliia (Henry SaruenO 1 137 

So|)hila (Elijah Lyman'* 003 

Sophronia (1700-)... 010 

Slanlev M. (1800-). 147.=; 

Starks (Nellie S. Childs) i 205 

Stciilien F. (Abi.qail SmitliV 397 



6i6 



INDEX TO THE EDSON SURNAME 



No. 

StiUman W. (i8i i-) Sy i 

Stuart F. (1900-) 1427 

Susan ( Wilcox) 459 

Susan (1791-1840: vinm.) 660 

Susan (Lund Tarbox, Julius Y. 

Dewe}0 966 

Susan (L. J. Garrison) 977 

Susan (1S80-) 1194 

Susan A. (1S23-9S; unm.) 9S5 

Susan M. (1826-85; unm.) 801 

Susanna (Rev. Jas. Keith) ..... ig 
Susanna (John Hayward, Elihu 

Brett) 49 

Susanna (S. Johnson) 67 

Susanna (Sam Hayward) 85 

Susanna (Joshua Beal) 203 

Susanna (Gershom Richmond).. 266 

Susanna (Lyman Spellman). ... 501 

Susanna (Lsrael Packard) 511 

Susanna 621 

Susanna (1767-) 671 

Susanna 774 

Theodatus (i 798-1835) 410 

Theodore (R. J. Parker) 416 

Theodore (Mattie Hannold) .... 741 

Theodore (S. M. Buford) 811 

Theodore 1192 

Thomas (Juliana Bustard) i 

Thomas (Ellen ) 6 

Thomas (Elizabeth Copson) .... 10 

Thomas (Mary Jarvi.s) 179 

Thomas 729 

Thomas ( Crainc) 14S7 

Thomas (m. ) 148S 

Thomas 1489 

Thomas H. (1837-54) 1145 

Timothy (Mary Alden) 68 

Timothy (Lydia Joy) 135 

Timothy (vSusanna Orcutt) 321 

Timothy (Hannah Bardwell, 

Mercy Graves) 331 

Timothy (Mary Downer) (545 

Timothy (-1809) 965a 

Timothy A. (1769-) 672 

Tracy John (1854-55) 1 1S4 

Tracy R. (1809-81; unm.) 797 

Trine(i7S4-) 643 

Virojl |. (1800-7S; m. ). . . 794 

Virgil J. (1S58-) 1399 

Walter 18 

Walter H. (18S5-) i2:;5 

Walter H. (Florilla B. Clark). . . 1381 



V 



No. 

Walter S. (1824-) 1141 

Walter S. ([848-) 1243 

Warren A. K. (b. and d. 1803).. 632 

Welley (1863-) '. . 1 1 19 

Wilford (1863-73) 1047 

Willard (1872-; d. y.) 382 

Willard (M. A. Ferguson) 749 

W^illard 1074 

WiUard H. (1897-) 1474 

William (b. and d. 1576) 11 

William 12 

William (.Martha Howard) 118 

William (Mary Randall, Hannah 

Packard) 276 

William (i 7S3-85) 404 

William (Anne Mackinnon) 736 

William 737 

William (1S43-47) 945 

William (Lucy Norton) 957 

William (Martha Storev) 976 

William (1854-) ' 1088 

William '19:5 

William B. (Lsabella Maule) . . . . 793 

William B 850 

William C. (b. and d. 1838) 1159 

William D. (1849-) 1164 

William D. (Jennie Souder) 1249 

William D. ("i860-) 1432 

William F. (S. H. Hitchcock) . . 929 

William H. (1879-) 1342 

William H. C18S0-) 1433 

William H. (1895-) 1464 

William ]. (Marv Fairchild) .... 405 

William N. (i86'2-) ii 70 

William N. (1873-) 1394 

William O. (1899-) 1473 

William P. (1797-1831) 417 

William P. (1845-) Sis 

William R. (b. and d. 1889) 1397 

William R. (1888-") 1426 

Willis (Catharine Clements, Rose 

Staddle, Mrs. N. Poolen) . .. 1156 

Willis B. (Cordelia Curtis) 1 1 39 

Willis Scott 1375b 

Wvllys (Sally Noble) joo 

Wvllys 781 

Wyllys F. (Hannah Noble) 790 

Wyman L under 603 

.Zil:)a (Timothy West) 291 

Ziba .' 543 

Zidon (178S-1S70: m. ).... 728 

Zilpah (Daniel Willis) 159 

Zilpah (Eliphalet Kingman) .... 510 

Zoroaster (E. N. Little) . .. 358 



Index to Surnames (3ther than F.dson 



Abbey Hannah (W. Green) 

Abbott, Alden H. (1S85-) 

Abbott, Alice M. (1S90-) 

Abbott, Clarence E. (1S81-).. . . 
Abbott, Edward C. (Alice M.) . . 
Abbott, Edward 'l\ (M. D. 

Gushing) 

Abbott, Ernest A. (iSSy-) 

Abbott. Hazel F. (i8q2-) 

Abby, Madison (Sarah) 

Adams, Edson 

Adams, Edward (R. Taylor).. . . 
Adams, Edward F. (Ella E.)... . 

Adams, Frank E 

Adams, Hiram E. (Melinda) . ... 

Adams, Lj-dia (J. Crane') 

Adams, Mark W 

Adams, Mark W 

Ainsworth, Matilda (Lticius) . ... 

Alden, A1)iah (1729-) 

Alden. Abieail W. (182.-) 

Alden, Daniel R. (182 5-) 

Alden, Gilbert (R. Smith) 

Alden. Henrietta (Oliver S.) . . . . 

AldcTi, Hosea 

.\lilcn. Ho.sea (Millv) 

.Mden. Isaac (R. Keith) 

Alden. Joseph (H. Dunham) . . .. 
AldeTi, Jose])h (H. Dimham")... . 

Alden, Josiah (ly.v*^-) 

Alden, Luther E.'(i8;,o-) 

Alden, Mary (Timothy) 

Alden, Mary 

Alden, Mehetabel (1732-) 

Alden. Samuel (Abiah Edson, R. 

Washburn) 

Alden, vSamud (17-56-) 

Alden. Sanniel (II. "Williams) . . . 

Mden . Sarah ( i 7,14-) 

Mden. Silas (i 74.-) 

Mden. Simeon (1740-) 

Mdrieh. Sarah (B. Hayward) . . . 

Mgt'r. I'>1)enezer (Relieeca) 

Mger. Susanna (j. Packard). . .. 

\llen. Beniamin (M. Carv) 

Mlen.Cale'bJ. (F. Haley) 

Mien, Daniel (i 74'?-) 

Mien. IClislia (M Bvram) 

\llen. Fmilv A. iOUmI) 



No. 

'.w7 
i4,S4 
1456 

M.S.? 

T 3 1 S 

1187 
1455 
1457 
160 
I 2 15 

1360 

121 ^ 

8.31 

8.3 I 
1214 

685 

22 I 

<;40 
Q48 
750 

7.^o 

2 2() 

.^74 
474 
68 
108 
225 

950 
68 

22S 

2 2 2 

loS 
224 

.^74 



226 
1 10 

.t()2 

o.s 

Tt47 

.=14 
I 147 



No. 

Alli'n. E])hraim (E. Wood) 286 

Allen, i'lsther (James) 106 

Allen, Hannah (John Edson, Job 

Packard) 95 

.\lien, Joseph ( r 7.4.2-) 315 

Allen. Josiah (Mary Read) 106 

Allen, Mary (1737-) 313 

Allen. Matilda (William D.). . . . 1164 

Allen. Mieah (Hannah) ........ 134 

Allen. .Mieah (1740-) 314 

Allin. Susanna (Nathan) 286 

.Mien. (Lavina) 819 

AUis, Russell (Sarah) 335 

.\mes, Al)igail ( 1822—) 911 

Ames. Adeline' A. (1844-) i 122 

.\mes. Chark's L. (1850-) i i 24 

Ames. David H. (Clarissa A.) . . . 762 

Ames, Edson D. (1840-) i 1 20 

Ames, Homer A. (1842-) 1 1 2 1 

Ames, Horace (1821-) ()io 

Ames, Job (M. Dike) 516 

.Ames, Joel (Reliance) 516 

Ames, Jonathan M. (1846-) .... i 123 

Ames. Julia M. (Barnabas) 760 

Ames, Luther (1828-) gi3 

Ames, Mary A. (i8:;7-) 112s 

Ames, "Nabby" (O. Bryant). .. 695 

Ames, Olive N. (183 2-) 014 

Ames, Sarah (A. Packard) 269 

Ames, Sarah F. (1826-) 012 

Andrews. Eliz. (Othnicl) 826 

.Vndrews, George S26 

.\ngc4, Wm. (E. I'"airehild) 405 

Armstead. (Emily). 1405 

.Xrnold. .\(leline (Roya!) 07.4 

Backus. .\nne M. (E. Johnson) . . 66Sk 
Bacon. Mary (M. Gamu'tt) . . 102. 104 

Baeek, luigene C. (Marv D . . . . 1171 

Baeek. Eugene H. (1SS6-) 1171 

Bailey. Hannah (S. Packard)... 30O 

Bailey. Ii>sei)h 100 

I-Jailev. Ruth ( losiali) 100 

Baini, Jesse W. ^E. Bush) i 1 oS 

Baird, Margaret (Frank) 1 i()8 

Baker, Hannah (E. Stetson)... . 732 

Bali-li. l";iizal>elli (Jonah) 1^4 

Balcome. IClias (Lucy) 852 

Baldwin. Frank C. (Lilian).. i 562 



617 



6i8 INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER THAN EDSON 



No. 

Banks, Mercy (Alonzo) io99 

Bardwell, Eben. (S. Tute) 331 

Bardwell, Hannah (Timothy)... 331 

Bardwell, John (Mary) 338 

Barman, Geo. H. (J. Dmioon) . . 1161 

Barnes, Mary (Samuel) 344 

Barnes, Sarah (John J.) 661 

Barnes, Sarah F. (John) 105 i 

Bartholomew, Adda E. (1858-). 1130 

Bartholomew, Daniel (Lucinda), 763 

Bartlett, Hannah (S. Howard).. 363 

Bartlett, Lucy (W. Hayward) . . 513 

Bass, Jonathan (S. Byram) 58 

Bass, Mary (John) 413 

Bassett, Lydia 210 

Batchelder, Stephen C. (Anne).. 1142 

Beal, Daniel (M. Byram) 205 

Beal, Joshna (Susanna) 205 

Beck, John R. (Mary ] .) 1292 

Beckley, Martha E. (Chas. E.).. 840 

Beckley, Ward (E. Trimbell) . . . 840 

Beebe, Elizabeth (Lewis) 402 

Beebe, Thankful (E. Bigelow) ... 395 

Belcher, Rebecca (Jesse) 105 

Belden, Paul (Hannah) 334 

Bennett, Edward (1862-) 1241 

Bennett, Edward E. (N. Stimp- 

son, Emily) 862 

Bennett, Jael (Abiezer) iii 

Benson, Ada L. ( j S76-) 1060 

Benson, Arthur D. (18S4-) 1063 

Benson, Chas. A. (1874-) io59 

Benson, Cyrus (L. Leonard).. . . 744 

Benson, Cyrus (1880-) 1061 

Benson, Nathan (1882-) 1062 

Benson, Zeno (Sibyl) 744 

Berry, Anne (Otis H.) 462 

Bigelow, Alice M. (1847-) 13 16 

Bigelow, Andrew W. (Electa)... loii 

Bigelow, Elisha (T. Beebe) 395 

Bigelow, Frances (Obed) 395 

Bigelow, Marcia (W. R. Oatley) . 13 15 

Bigelow, Sam. M. (Electa P.).. . loii 

Bigelow, Seth G. (L. Wheatley). loii 

Bisbee, Chandler 846 

Bisbee, John (Rebecca Keith, 

Huldah Snow, Mary) 474 

Bisbee, Ziba 845 

Blake, Caroline A. (Seth) 937 

Blakesle, Dean (P. Negus) 70s 

Blakesle. Elizabeth (O^ Potter) . . 703 

Blakesle, Elkanah (Cynthia).... 350 
Blakesle, Freeman (M. A. 

Woodward) 700 

Blakesle, Mary (T. Potter) 701 

Blakesle, Merritt (E. Hartson) . . 704 

Blakesle, Silvanus (M. Mills)... 702 

Blakeslee, Edw. (H. Mansfield).. 394 

Blanchard Mary (L Reed) 649 

Blatchley, David (Phoebe) 607 

Bliss, Clark (Abigail ) 788 

Bliss, Hannah (Darwin M.) 788 



No. 
Blodgett, Orinda (E. Carpenter), 

under 135 
Blodgett. See " Bloggett." 

Bloggett, Silvanus (Relief) 326 

Bloomfield, Juliana (Chalous) . . 353 

Bonesteel, Consider (Bethiah)... 168 

Bonesteel, Jacob N. (G. Ring) . . 799 
Bonesteel, " Margaret B. (Mar- 

niont) 799 

Bonesteel, Rodolphus( Elizabeth) 170 

Bonesteel, Family of 799 

Booth, Orilla (Ofrin) 650 

Bowen, Sophronia (Jacob) 480 

Boylan, Hannah (Gamaliel). . . . 751 
Bradford, Mrs. Amelia (E. Wes- 
ton) 972 

Bradford, Austin (Amelia — )... 972 

Bradley, Eunice (Jacob) 557 

Brett, Abigail (Albert) 623 

Brett, Anne 78 

Brett, Bethiel 79 

Brett, Elihu (Anne ) 49 

Brett, Elihu (Susanna) 49 

Brett, Elizabeth 80 

Brett, Hannah (F. Cary) 61 

Brett, John 77 

Brett, Mehetabel (Samuel) 65 

Brett, Nathaniel (S. Hayward). 65 

Brett, Uriah (A. Kingman) 623 

Brigham, N. (Eliza) 961 

Brown, Abiel 515 

Brown, Annie (C. Stratton) 102 61 

Brown, Joel (Anna) 681 

Brown, Roxana (A. Kingman).. 515 

Bruce, (Elizabeth) 548 

Bryant, Albert F. (1841-) 1032 

Bryant, Alice (Simeon H.) 366 

Bryant, Daniel 366 

Brvant, Daniel (J. Mitchell) ... 361 

Bryant, Danville" F. (1836-).. . . 1030 

Bryant, EHz. D. (vSeth B.) 737 

Bryant, Ellis (b. and d. 1845)... 1033 

Brvant, Franklin E. (1033-).... 1029 

Bryant, George (E. Deblois).. . . 737 

Bryant, Henry G. (1839-) 1031 

Bryant, Ira (Phrebe) 570 

Bryant, Jennet (Jonah) 361 

Bryant, Lucinda A. (1829-).. . . 1027 

Brvant, Mercy (S. Packard).. . . 121 

Bryant, Oliver (N. Ames) 695 

Bryant, Ziba B. (Lucinda) 695 

Bryant, Ziba H. (1830-) 1028 

Buck, Eleanor (J. Crane) 684 

Buckland, Chas.'(R. M. Hosmer) 1333 

Bucklin, Sarah (A. Lord) 844 

Buford. Charles (L. Duke) 811 

Buford, Sam. M. (Theodore)...^. 811 
Burhans, Dan. (Prudence, C. 
vSilyester,H. Mansfield, Anna 

Lane) 304 

Burhans, Dan. E. (1791-) 776 

Burhans, Henry (Z. Hall) 394 



INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER THxVN EDSON 619 



No. 

Buiiians, Prudence S. (1789-). . 775 

BurHnggame, Ruth (C. Seaver). 13^7 

Burnhani (Emily Devine) . i i 27 

Burns, Robert (Rebecca) i4()f' 

Burr, John (S. Lyon) 8o(; 

Bin-r, Alary M. (Samuel) Sog 

Burrcll, Henry (1819-) 864 

Burrell, John (vSarah) 487 

Burrell, fohn 487 

Burrell, Nicholas ( 18 1 7-) 863 

Burrell, Sarah (1823-) 865 

Bush, Ellen (J. W. Baird) iiy8 

Bushnell, Douglas (Emily J.).. . gftg 

Bustard, John (E. Fox) i 

Bustard, fuliana (Thomas) i 

Byram, B'ethiah (1678-85) 52 

Byram, Ebenezer (H. Hayward), 57 

Byram, Joseph (M. Perkms).. . . 60 

Byram, Josiah (II. Richard)... 59 

Byram, Margaret (1680-85). • ■ • 53 

Byram, Mary (Edw. Howard) . . 56 

Byram, Mehetabel (E. Allen).. . 54 

Byram, Mehetabel (D. Beal).... 205 

Byram, Nicholas (Mary) 23 

Byram, Nicholas (S. Sliaw) . . . .22, 23 

Byram, Nicholas (A. Snell) 55 

Byram, Susanna (vSamuel) 22 

Byram, vSusanna (J. Bass) 58 

Cady, Miriam (N. Johnson) 668h 

Cady, Salome (C. Johnson) 668e 

Calagan, Terence (M. Graves). .. 1026c 

Campbell, IsabcUe (Geo. C.).. . . 1392 

Ca])ron, Clarissa (Henry) 1009 

Capron, Ephraim (H. Sanders).. 1009 

Carnes, Eva P. (1876-) i447 

Carnes, Geo. D. (Lucy J.) 13 14 

Carnes, John (Mary Paine) T314 

Carnes, Thos. H. (1878-) T448 

Carpenter, Elias (O. Blodgelt), 

under 1 3 5 

Carr, Daniel (Martha) 150 

Carver, Experience (J. Cary) . . . 230 

Cary, Azuba (S. Johnson) 131 

Cary, Elij)halet (H. Lawrence).. 230 

Cary, Francis (H. Brett) 61 

Cary, Jonathan (E. Carver) 230 

Cary, Lvdia (Joseph) 61 

Cary, Mehetal)el (B. Allen) 95 

Chad wick, Margaret (John L.) . . 11 90 

Chamberlain, John (Eunice).... 152 

Cliamberlain, ( Justus) 67 ^ 

Chandler, Llovd H. (Agatha B.). 1197 

Charlier, Elie (J . V. Stacev) i 208 

Charlier, Winona (John T.) 1208 

Charters, Mary J. "(I'^Iijah H.)... 1503 

Charters, Robert (m. ) t 503 

Cheedle, Lydia (Simeon IL). . . . 366 

Cheedle. Sarah (Simeon H.).. . . 366 

(diilds, N\-llie S. (Starks) 1205 

Cliilds, Ste])lu'n (.\. Russi'H).. . . 1205 

Churchill, Juliette (\V. Page). . . 12 16 



No. 

Cilley, Mary (R. Sinkler) 395 

Clark, Aiuie ( Flijah) 258 

Clark, .Anne (Elijah) 362 

Clark, Beniamin (Mehetabel)... 207 

Clark, Florilla B. (Walter U.) . . 1381 

(,:iark, Francis D. (M. 1. Groven), i 381 

Clark, Helen (S. Rider) 954 

Clarke, Frances liliz. (julni 1 1.), 970 

Clarke, Newman vS. (E. Durand), 970 

Clemens, Emilv P. ( |ohn) 647 

Clements, Catli. (Willis) 1156 

Cole, Marv (Rufus) 172 

Cole, Mary M. (P. B. \Vili)er).. . 769 

Cole, Zenas (Olive) 388 

Cole, Zenas (18 15-17) 768 

Collins, Dennis (Honora ) . . 1 102 

Collins, Julia (James L. F.) 1102 

ColwcU, Sarah (Albertus) 427 

Comstock, Desire (Seth) 282 

Conant, John (A. Pratt) 547 

Conant, Lot (E. Homes) 259 

Conant, Lydia (Calvin) 259 

Conant, Margaret (Al)el) 90 

Conant, Nathaniel {E. Hains)... 90 

Conant, Thomas (Lydia) 547 

Converse, Joseph (M. Johnson).. 340 

Cook, Elias 947 

Cook, George (H. Graves) 1026 

Cook, Jane ( Hiram A.) 947 

Coon, Albert E. (1869-) 1225 

Coon, Edson (1863-66) 122-5 

Coon, Geo. O. (1871-). . . 1226 

Coon, John H. (Abigail) 834 

Coon, John H. (1866-) 1224 

Coon, Julia A. (1874-) 1227 

Cooper, John (Sarah) 97 

Copson, Elizabeth (Thomas).... 10 

Corlctt, Marion C. (Geo. A.).. . . 135 i 

Cotton, vSimon (Sophia) 684 

Coun, Simeon B. (Charles) 817 

Covey, Alfred D. (1869-) 13 1 1 

Covey, Calvin E. (1859-) 1309 

Covey, Calvin J. (Sarah A.) . . . . 999 

Covev, Dorothv L. (186 5-) 13 10 

Crafts, Chas. E'. (M. HedViek) ... 1322 

Crafts, Freeman A, (Martha). . . 1025 
Crafts, Katharine E. (G. F. 

Pease) 13- 3 

Crainc, (Thomas) J4''^7 

Crane, Daniel (1 77 1-) * .S-o 

Crane, Geo. H. (1823-) 1003 

Crane, Horatio (So])hia) 684 

Crane, Jonathan (Mary, Lydia 

Adams) 235 

Crane. Josejdi (E. Buck) 6S4 

Crane. Lemuel .■ 1 1 

Crane. Lydia (Rodoli)hus) 244 

Crane, vSojihia (1827-) 1004 

Crane. Susanna (1776-") 521 

(^rocker, I*;i)iMU'zer (Abigail"). . . . 576 

Croful. i-vdi.i .\. (Isaac C.) o(>4 

Crofut, Pl.it I, I Mary ) 004 



620 INDEX T(3 SURNAMES OTHER THAN EDSON 



No. 

Crosby, Alphteus (M. Kingman).. 965a 

Crosby, Rebecca (Calvin) 545 

Cvmningham, Ella (Curtis G.)... 1349 

Curtis, Charlotte (James) 899 

Curtis, Cordelia (Willis) 1139 

Cushing, Angeline 1 188 

Cushing, Margaret D 1187 

Cushing, Mary (M. E. Hall) 1186 

Cushing, Oliver E. (Mary) 807 

Cushing, Stephen (E. Edwards). 807 

Cutler, Anne (S. Parker) 416 

Damon, Geo. B. (Mary D.) 1058 

Davis, Francis (Catharine Z.).. . 1204 

Davis, Jas. W. (Abby Ferris).. . 1204 

Dean, Abigail (Josiali) 62 

Dean, Abigail (Josiah) 109 

Dean, Benj. (S. Williams) 51 

Dean, Bethiah (1677-79) 69 

Dean, Elizabeth (Josiah) 25 

Dean, Elizabeth (16 76-) 41 

Dean, Ephraim 74 

Dean, Ezra (Bethiah) 26 

Dean, Ezra 70 

Dean, Lsrael 44 

Dean, John (Alice ) 20 

Dean, John (Sarah) 20 

Dean, John (Alice ) 25 

Dean, John (b. and d. 1670).. . . 38 

Dean, John 40 

Dean, "Margaret 73 

Dean, Mary 42 

Dean, Mary (Samuel) 51 

Dean, Mehetabel 39 

Dean, Samuel 36 

Dean, Samuel (1681-83). 71 

Dean, Sarah 37 

Dean, Sarah (Caleb) 262 

Dean, Sarah (Caleb) 518 

Dean, Seth 72 

Dean, Susanna 43 

Dean, Walter (E. Strong) 26 

Death, Benjamin (Huldah) 2og 

Deblois, Eliz. (G. Bryant) 7^7 

DeKay, Janet (J. T. Robins). . . 11,81 

dc Troope. See " Throop " . . . . 656 

Devine, Emily L. ( Burnham) 1 1 2 7 

Devine, John (Mary) 385 

Devine, Mary A. (1850-) 1 1 20 

Devine, Sarah A. (1839-) 11 26 

Devine, William (Sarah) 387 

Devine, William (Lucinda) 76^ 

Devine, William L. F. (1845-64) 11 28 

Dewell, Dan. S. (1897-) 1437 

Dewell, Harrison S. (Helen A.).. 129S 

Dewell, Nathaniel S. (1S85-) ... 14^,5 

Dewell, Rose f 1886-). . . . ^ 1436 

Dewey, Charles (E. Tarbox).. . . 1276 
Dewey, Julius G. (Mary Perrin, 

Susan, Susan Lilley) 966 

Dewey, Mary P 1276 

Dewey, Simeon (P. Yemans) . . . 966 



No. 
Dewey, Wm. T. (Alice French), 

under 966 

Dickerman, Manassah (m. ) . 563 

Dickerman, Sarah (N. Shepard- 

son) 563 

Diehl, Susan D. (Henry T.) 12 19 

Diehl, Thos. J. (M. Whetharill) . . 1219 

Dike, Mary (Job Ames) 516 

Dike, Sarah (Ephraim Noyes) . . 517 

Dingley, Charles (A. Sylvester). 1384 
Downer, Mary (Timothy, Jas. 

Robinson) 645 

Downer, Sarah (S. Lathrop).. . . 66 

Drew, Adelaide (Geo. W.) 1 1 14 

Drew, W. H. (Emeline Richard- 
son) 1 1 1 4 

Du Bois,Mary I.(E. W. Parris) (p. 450) 

Ditke, Lucy (C. Buford) 811 

Dunbar, Amos (Sarah H.) 897 

Dunbar, James (E. Hayward) . . 93 
Dunbar, Josiah (Silence, A. 

Shurtlefif) 93 

Dunbar, Josiah (1769-) 184 

Dunbar, "Martha (Calvin) 545 

Dunham, Hannah (J. Alden) . .68, 108 
Dunham, Mary (J. Hayward)... 188 
Dunham, Mehetabel (J. Hay- 
ward) 65 

Dunoon, George (Anne ) ... 1 161 

Dunoon, Jennie (Rufus P.) 1161 

Durand, Eliz. (N. S. Clarke).. . . 970 
Dusenbury, Mary (H. Van Vel- 

sor) 1216 

Dutton, Charles) /tt r- \ ^1 

T-N , , TT y (H. Graves). . io26d 
Dutton, Henry ) 

Earl, Mr. (C. Williams) iii 

Eastman, Titus (Olive) 920 

Eaton, Lucy (Polycarpus) 245 

Eddy, Zcchariah (Sarah).. 338 

Edwards, Ethelinda (vS. Cushing) 807 

Ellis, Royal (M. Johnson) 668f 

Elv, Abner L. (Fanny F.) 1212 

Ely, Richard F. (1886-) 1421 

Esty, Al)igail (G. Packard) 274 

Fairchild, Abijah (S. Howell).. . 405 

Fairchild, Anne ( Graves).. 405 

Fairchild, Caroline (D. Ford).. . 405 

Fairchild, Catharine ( Jones) 405 

Fairchild, Chas. S. (H. Linck- 

laen) 405 

Fairchild, David (1791-) 405 

Fairchild, Eunice (1788-) 405 

Fairchild, Gabriel (1784-) 405 

Fairchild, John F. (1786-) 405 

Fairchild, Mary (William J.) 405 

Fairchild, Ph(ebe (S. Gregory).. 405 

Fairchild, William (1780-) 405 

Fairchild, Family of 405 

Ferguson, Margaret (Ephraim).. 743 

Ferguson, Mary A. (Willard) . . . 749 



INDEX TO SURNAMES ()THJ::R TIIAX l-DSOX 621 



No. 

Ferris, Abby (J. \V. JJa\is) 1204 

Field, Dorcas ((). Williams) .... 430 

Field, Experienee (j()se])h) 24 

Finney, Asa C. (Flizabeth) 6g8 

Fish, Susanna, u'/(/.(l. II ayward). 513 

Fisher, ^Vmos (Rebecca) 191 

Fiske, Prndenee (Obcd) 176 

Fiskc, Wyllys 176 

Flagg, Rosina (joy Love) i,3 76 

Flint, Eliiah (L. Jones) •j'^q 

Flint, Louise F. (A. H. Warden) . 1321 

I^^lint, Sarah (Lewis M.) 759 

Fobes, Abigail (1747-) 250 

Fobes, Alpheus (1756-) 254 

Fobes, Anne (A. Packard) 195 

Fobes, Ezra (1751-) 252 

Fobes, Frcclove (1754-) 253 

Fobes, Jason (1745-) 249 

Fobes, John (A. Robinson) 112 

Fobes, John (1758-) 256 

Fobes, Joseph (1758-) 255 

Fobes, Josiah (Freelove) 112 

Fobes, Josiah (1740-) 247 

Fobes, Martha (Ebenezer) 287 

Fobes, Nathan (1761-) 257 

Fobes, Perez (1742-) 248 

Fobes, Sihia (1749-) 251 

Ford, De Witt (C. Fairchild) . . . 405 

Forrest, Abigail (Joseph) 100 

Foster, Ancil (Elizabeth A.).. . . 1098 
Foster, Charlotte (W. L. Tar- 
box) 1275 

Foster, Emerson (1854-) 1348 

Foster, Jacob (C. Ilobart) ^~7Sh 

Foster, 'Rachel (A. Rider) 9114 

Fox, Amy C. (Charles P.) 426 

Fox, Elizabeth (John Bustard).. 1 

Fox, Geo. W. (llannah ).. . 426 

French, Abigail W. (C^^rus) 456 

French, Alice E. (W. t. Dewey) 

under 966 

French, Isaac 563 

French, Mary (N. Shcpardson, 

E. Washburn) 563 

Frolhinghani, Chas. (Ftmny 

— ) : 830 

Frothingham, Eliz. (Alexander). 830 

I-'uller, Isaac (S. Packard) 199 

Fuller, l.saac (S. Packard) 218 

I-'ulUr, Isaiah (M. Kej'ser) 567 

Fuller, Jacob (A. Leonard, H. 

Orcutt, Mary) 567 

I'uller, Marv (Chester) 356 

I'uller. ()li\e (Danit'l) igc) 

I'ullcr. Ki'liani-e (fosiah) 21S 

I'\ilKTtMn, Mehela'bcl (David)... 4S6 

Ganuett, Ivli/abeth {'I'. May- 
ward) I 74, 312 

Gaunelt, .Mar\- ( Jnlui) T02 

Gaiuiett, Matthew (M. Bacon), ioj. 104 

Gannett, Susanna (David) 104 



No. 
Garbutt, Elmer II. (limeliiie).. . 697 

Garrison, Elizabeth 658 

Garrison, L. J. (Susan) 977 

Garri.son, Olivia 658 

Garrison, 'i'ap])an 658 

Garri.son, William 658 

(kites, ^Mbert (Flora Iv) 1.389 

Gibson, Cyrus (Anna E.) 1109 

Giddings, Hannah (L. Parker). . 731 
Gillett, Hannah ((). Morton). . . 337 
Gilmour, Anna (M. Sylvester). . 1148 

Gold, Joseph (C. John.son) 668b 

Goodale, Dorothy (David S.).. . 663 
Goodalc, Norman (Hannah).. . . 676 
Goodrich. Thankful (Freeman).. 349 

Goodrich. (Delana) 351 

(jraves, Albert (1840-53) io26f 

Graves, Elizabeth (1829-78; 

unm.) 1026b 

Graves, Frances (1827-1900: 

lunn.) 1026a 

Graves, Harriet, (I k'ury Dullon. 

Chas. Dutlon) jojOd 

Graves, Maria (T. Calagan) 10260 

Graves, Martin (Mehetabel) .... 332 

Graves, Mercy (Timoth}') 331 

Graves, Nelson (E. Stratton). . . io26g 
Graves, Oliver (R. Smjth) . . . . 331 , ;^^^ 
Graves, Rebecca (Jonathan).... t,^^ 

Graves, Spencer (Lura) 691 

Graves, Wm. S. (Or])ah Howe).. 1026c 

Graves, (A. Fairchild) 405 

Green, Abigail M. (Lyman S.) . . 1483 

Green, Alma B. (John M.) i377 

Green, Henry (Eliza ) 1483 

Green, Mary (Samuel S.) 754 

Green, William (II. Abbey) .... 1377 

(jreene, Azuba (Calvin) 322 

(ireene. Jolm Taylor (I'.leanor) . . 653 

Gregg, xVlfonso 1067 

Gregg. Nathaniel 1064 

Gregg. Ri'l)ecca 1065 

Gregg. Solomon 1066 

Gregg, — (?>unice) 715 

Gregory, Stephen (P. Fairchild). 405 

Griffin, Jfinc (Ebenezer) 94 

Griffins." Anna ( Hall) 160 

Griswold. John (A. Lyman). . . . 1026m 

Groven. Martha (F. CMark) 1381 

Gurney, Elizabeth (Barnabas).. 514 
Gurney, Zcchariah (M. Packard) , 514 

Haines. Harriet (S. Waler.s).... ()5i 

Ilains, Elizabeth (N. Conant)... 00 

Hale, Jennie (C. II. Rojies) 1221 

Ilale\". Emily (C. J. Allen) i 117 

Hall. Anna (Samuel) 151 

Hall, Martin (M. Cushing) 1186 

Hall, Mary (Nathan). . ." 160 

Hall. Roderick (AmiieM.) 1057 

Hall. Zeriah (H. Burhans'l 304 

Hall. (Anna GrifVMis~) 160 



622 INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER THAN EDSON 



No. 

Hallett, Louis (Mary E.) 1302 

Halverson, Martha (Daniel S.)-. 997 

Hamilton, Harry S. (Julia) 11 72 

Hammond, H. H. (Mrs.) 1375c 

Hanford, Mary (Freeman) 349 

Hannold, Mattie (Theodore). ... 741 

Harder (Eliza C.) 1 1 7 5 

Harkness, John (Keziah) 270 

Harriman, Helen ( — Smith). . . . 603 

Harris, Benj. (J. A. Orr) 1042 

Harris, Helen (Melvin) 835a 

Harris, John (Abigail) 275 

Harris, Julia 789 

Harris, 'Mary (D. Packard) 93 

Harris, Mary M, (Charles) 1042 

Hartson, David (Esther) 357 

Hartson, Emily (M. Blakesle) . . 704 

Hartson, Emily 730 

Hatch, Sophia (M. Paine) 1317 

Hathaway, Atilda (E. Mead). . . 953 

Hayes, Julia 789 

Hayes, Thomas (Adelia) 789 

Hayward, Abigail 143 

Hayward, Ambrose (1810-). . . . 892 

Hayward, Benjamin (S. Aldrich) no 

Hayward, Edward (1753-) 240 

Hayward, Elijah (1741-) 236 

Hayward, Elizabeth 142 

Hayward, Elizabeth (Nathaniel), 312 
Hayward, Experience (J. Dun- 
bar) 93 

Hayward, Hannah (E. Byram) . 57 

Hayward, Hezekiah (Huldah) . . iio 

Hayward, Hezekiah (1746-).. . . 238 

Hayward, Huldah (1744-) 237 

Hayward, Ira (Sarah, Susanna 

Fish) 513 

Hayward, Joanna (D. Snow) ... 125 

Hayward, John (Susanna) 49 

Hayward, John (S. Mitchell) ... 49 

Hayward, Jo.seph (M. Dunham) . 65 

Hayward, Josiah (M. Dunham) . . 188 

Hayward, Julia (1814-) 894 

Hayward, Mary (Robert) 188 

Hayward, Mehetabel (Samuel).. 65 

Hayward, Otis (1806-) 891 

Hayward. Samuel (vSusanna) ... 85 
Hayward, Samuel (Elizabeth 

, ) 85 

Hayward, Samuel 140 

Hayward, Sarah (N. Brett) 65 

Hayward, Sarah 76 

Hayward, Sarah (Levi) 167 

Hayward, Sarah R. (1818-). . . . 895 

Hayward, Sumner A. (181 2-). . . 893 

Hayward, Susanna 75 

Hayward, Susanna (Jesse) 174 

Hayward, Thomas (E. Gannett), 

1 74. 312 

Hayward, Waldo (L. Bartlett) . . 513 

Hay ward, William (Abigail ) 167 

Hayward, Ziba (i 749-) 239 



No. 

Hazard, Elsie (Pascal P.) 968 

Hea, (Miriam) 1494 

Heath, Aaron (Rhoda) 280 

Heath, Joseph (Patience ).. 605 

Heath, Phcube (Harley, E. 

Weeks) 605 

Hedrick, Margaret (C. Crafts)... 1322 

Helme, Jas. W. (Rose A.) 1299 

Henley, Rebecca T. (J. Soley) . . 651 

Henry, Alden E. (1877-) 1329 

Henry, Amelia (C. Van Brunt).. 1222 

Henry, Elizabeth E. (1879-). • • ^333 

Henry, Gladys (r88i-) 1331 

Henry, Jas. H. (Emergene) 1086 

Henry, Joseph E. (1886-) i334 

Henry, Margaret E. (1879-).. . . 1330 

Henry, Wm. C. (Azelia) 1084 

Henry, Wm. E. (187 1-) . 1332 

Henry, Miles S. (Emily J.) 969 

Herri tage, Ella (Alfred H.) 1258 

Hewlett, James (Edna) 591 

Higgins, Aurora (Obed) 395 

Higgins, Frank (Elizabeth) 1165 

Hill, (Caroline) 597 

Hitchcock, Gad 929 

Hitchcock, Susan H.(Wm. F.). . 929 
Hoadley, Frank (L. Graves).. . . 1026k 

Hobart, Charlotte (J. Foster).. . 1275 

Holbrook, (Mary) 567 

Holmes, Eunice (B. Sprague).. . 192 

Holt, Elias (Martha Stratton)... io26i 

Homes, Elizabeth (L. Conant) . . 2=^9 

Hooker, John W. (M. Mansfield) . 1368 

Hosmer,' Albert (H. Martin).. . . 1357 

Hosmer, Alonzo J. (1856-) 13 54 

Hosmer, Cyrus (Marquette) iioo 

Hosmer, Emma C. (i8**-72). . . 1356 
Hosmer, Harriet (T. Johnson). . 1355 
Hosmer, Rosina M. (C. Buck- 
land) 1353 

Howard, Cyrus (Abi) 577 

Howard, Edward (M. Byram). . 56 

Howard, Eliakim (M. Howard).. 157 

Howard, Eunice (A. Packard) . . 276 

Howard, Irene (Seth) 1 1 q 

Howard, Keziah (Noah) 157 

Howard, Martha (William) 118 

Howard, Mary (E. Pierce) 107 

Howard, Mary (E. Howard).... 157 

Howard, Mary (T. Packard) 285 

Howard, Marv (Ephraim) 363 

Howard, Robert (A. Keith) .... 118 

Howard, Sarah (Z. Packard).... 62 

Howard, Simeon (H. Bartlett).. 363 

Howard, Theodora (Seth) 273 

Howard, Theophilus (S. Lath- 

rop) 128 

Howe, Cornelia (Alonzo) 1099 

Howe, Israel (H. Washburn) . . . 497 

Howe, Israel (M. Johnson) fi68d 

Howe, Joseph (Dorcas) 595 

Howe, Lucinda (Packard) 497 



INDEX TO SURNAMEvS OTIll^R THAN EDSON 623 



No. 
Howe, Orpali (W. S. (Iraves). . .1026c 

Howe, Willis (Ivcturah) 396 

Hubbell, Alnura (18 18-) 706 

Hubbell, Eli 710 

Hubbell, Henry 707 

Hubbell, Lewis 712 

Hubbell, Mary 709 

Hubbell, Olive 711 

Hubbell, William (Delana) 351 

Hubbell, William 708 

Hudson, Daniel 461 

Hudson, Hannah (Cvrus) 196 

Hudson, John (B. Cyiis) 196 

Hudson, Lucy (Galen K.) 461 

Hudson, William 19 

Hughston. Curtis E ri68 

Hughston, Gulian R 1167 

Hughston, Isabella M 11 69 

Hughston, R()1)ert S. (vSarah).. . 791 

Hunt, Herbert (E. Sylvester).. . 1385 

Hutchinson, J. (Herman) 1409 

Hutchinson, John (Emily S. 

) 1409 

Hvde, Chas. M. (i8:;8-) 995 

Hyde, Geo. R. (1825-) 988 

Hyde, Harrictta L (18 36-) 994 

Hyde, Jos. E. (1822-) ! 986 

Hyde, Julia J. (1841-) 996 

Hyde, Lydia A. (1S31-) 992 

Hyde, Lydia E. (1833-) 993 

Hyde, Mary S. (1828-) 990 

Hyde, Milton (Harrictta) 662 

Hyde, Sarah M 991 

Hyde, Susan A. (1823-) 987 

Hyde, William 662 

Hyde, William A. (1827-) 989 

Inman, (D. May) 386 

Jackson, Mary (E. Willis) 157 

Jacques, Cynthia (O. Stewart).. 383 

Jaqucs, Esther (Amos W.) ^3,5^ 

Jarvis, Mary (Thomas) 179 

Jarvis, William (M. Wright) 179 

"Jersey, Cordie " (Sarah) 1485 

Jcjhnson, Anna (Benjamin) 281 

Johnson, Celia (b. and d. 1787). 668c , 

Johnson, Clarissa (Joseph Gold) . 668d 
Johnson, Cyril (Salinon Cadv, 

C. McKenncy) .' . 6681 

Johnson, Ebenezcr (Mary) 327 

Johnson, Ebenezcr 49S 

Johnson, Ebenezcr Joy (Nancy 

Backus) ! 668k 

John.son, Isaac (A. Leavitt) .... 67 

Johnson, Josiah (Azuba Cary) . . 131 

John.son, Lovisa (L. Mclntire) . . 668i 
Johnson, Marcia (6680 (Roval 

Ellis, O.sandcr) '. . 498 

Johnson, Mary (James Lo\-elI).. 133 

Johnson, Mary (J. Converse). . . 340 

Johnson, Mary (N. Johnson).... 359 



No. 

Johnsiin, Mary (Eli Ibiwt) 668d 

John.son, Mary L. (Elijohalet) . . 359 

Johnson, Nathan (1738-) 132 

Johnson, Nathan (M.Johnson).. 359 

Johnson, Nathaniel 131 

Johnson, Nathaniel (M. Cady) . . 668h 

Johnson, Rebecca ( ICzra) 96 

[ohnson, Sarah (B. Moulton).. . 340a 

Johnson. SelcMida (W. Orcutt). . "668g 

Johnscjn, Scth (Mary) 131 

Johnson, Seth (1733-) 130 

Johnson, Solomon (Susanna) ... 67- 

Johnson, vSusan (S. Moulton) . . . 340b 

Johnson, Susanna (J. Lathro])).. 129 

Johnson, Theodore (H. Ilosmer) 1355 
Johnson, Timothy E. (H. 

Sprague) 668i 

Jolly, Marie L. (\V. Kclty, A. V. 

Pancoast) 1408 

Jones, Lurtma (Joel) 306 

Jones, Lydia (E. Flint) 759 

Jones, (Catharine Fairchild), 405 

Joslyn, Eunice (J. Kingman). . . 360 

Joy, John (L. Lincoln) 127 

Joy, Lydia (Timothy) 127 

Karn, Minnie (Oscar M.) 1303 

Keen, Joanna (Lebb.xus) 193 

Keen, Tabitha (John) 185 

Keith, Abigail (R. Howard).. . . 118 

Keith, Benjamin 19 

Keith, Benjamin (Sarah) 494 

Keith, Jas 27 

Keith. James, Rev. (Susanna).. 19 

Keith, Jemima (J. Packard).... 120 

Keith, John 31 

Keith, John (Z. Willis) 494 

Keith, Jos 28 

Keith, Josiah 32 

Keith Josiah 474 

Keith, Margaret S3 

Keith, Mary 34 

Keith. Rebecca (J. Bisbcc) 474 

Keith, Rfiyal 19 

Keith, Samuel 29 

Keith, Susanna 35 

Keith, Timothy 30 

Keith. Ziba C 19 

Kcltv, Harrv S. (J. De Kav) ... 1408 

Kelt'v, Madelon (1898-). . .' 1476 

Kclty. Wm. L. (M. Jolly) 1408 

Kendall, Mr 1 63 

Kenncy. Rhoda (C. Mackin- 

non) 736 

Keyzer. Mary (I. Fuller) 567 

Kibbie, Sarah (.\bicl) 522 

Kimball. Isabi'llcG. (George D.), 967 

Kingman. .\I)igaiI (M. Brett). . . 623 

Kingm.in. .Ndrlinc (1809-) 876 

Kingman. .\Mrn B. (1817-).... 904 
Kingman, Alexander (S. Lath- 

r'^>p) I -! 7 



624 INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER THAN EDSON 



No. 
Kingman, Ambrose (Esther, 
"Ruth Pratt, M. Richards, 

R. Brown) 515 

Kingman, Anne A. (181 3-) 902 

Kingman, Davis (181 4-) 878 

Kingman, Dianthe J. (1825-).. . go8 

Kingman , Elbridge ( 1 8 1 2-) . . . .' . 581 

Kingman, EHphalet (Zilpah).... 510 

Kingman, EHphalet (1821—).. .". 880 
Kingman, EHzabeth (1836-; 

unm.) Q^sb 

Kingman, Esther E. (1815-).... 903 

Kingman, Franeis (18 10-) 901 

Kingman, Hannah (J. WilHams), 493 

Kingman, Henry (A. White) ... 277 

Kingman, Horaee M. (1848-50).. 965d 

Kingman, Huldah (Noah) 360 

Kingman, Isaac (181 1-) '. 877 

Kingman, Joseph (E. Joslyn).. . . 360 

Kingman, Josiah (EHzabeth H.) 634 

Kingman, Josiah A. (1823-).... 907 
Kingman, Josiah E. (181 9-; d. 

in inf.) 905 

Kingman, Lucia (1816-) 879 

Kingman, Lucius (1803-) 874 

Kingman, Lucy (1839-70) 965c 

Kingman, Martha (A. Crosby).. 965a 

Kingman, Matthew (J. Packard) 510 

Kingman, Matthew (1807-). . . . 875 

Kingman, Sarah J. (182 2-) 906 

Kingman, Seth (J. Washburn, 

Jannet) 277 

Kinginan, Setli (J. Washburn).. 515 

Kingman, Susan A. (1830-). . . . 909 

Knowlton, Gurdon (Laura ), 964 

La Barr, Carohne (S. C. Squier) . . 1 2 1 7 

Lane, Anna (D. Burhans) 394 

Lane, Susan (E. Pulsipher) .... 826 

La Rue, Rebecca (Chauncey).. . 982 

Latham, Susanna (T. Wade) ... 190 

Lathrop, Elizabeth (S. Packard), 50 

Lathrop, John (Mary) 66 

Lathrop, Jonathan (S. Johnson) 129 

Lathrop, Mary (i 720-; d.tmm.), 126 

Lathrop, Samuel (vS. Downer)... 66 

Lathrop, Samuel (A. LazcU).. . . 11 1 

Lathrop, Sarah (Abiczer) 1 1 1 

Lathrop, Sarah (A. Kingman). 127 

Lathrop, vSusanna (T. Howard). 128 
Lawrence, Hannah (Josiah, E. 

Gary) 230 

Lawrence, Thoinas (Desire ) 230 

Lazell, Abial (S. Lathrop) in 

Lazell, Abigail, Mrs 67 

Leach, Benanuel (E. Perkins, 

Elizabeth) 92 

Leach, Benjamin (H. Washburn) 92 

Leach, David (Hannah ).. . 94 

Leavitt, Abigail ( Lazell, L 

Johnson) 67 

Leavitt, Emma J. (Mark) 808 



No. 

Leavitt, Lydia (J. Sprague) .... 89 

Leavitt, Tabitha (J. Thayer). . . 307 

Lee, (Jacob) 480 

Leonard, Abigail (J. Fuller). . . . 567 

Leonard, Lydia W. (G. Ben.son).. 744 

Leoniird, Martha (N. Perkins). . 88 

Letvis,tZelotes (Elizabeth) 352 

Lilley, Susan (J. G. Dewey). . . . 966 

Lilly, Ghloe 713 

Lilly, HeiVIow 714 

Lilly, Mehetabel (Jonathan).. . . 130 

Lilly, LVzah Torrey (Amasa) . . . 337 

Lilly, (Elizabeth) 352 

Lineklaen, Helen (G. S. Fair- 
child) 405 

Lincoln, Amelia (183 2-) 870 

Lincoln, Benjamin, Genl 929 

Lincoln, Daniel (1826-) 868 

Lincoln, David (1828-) 869 

Lincoln, David E. (1823-; d. y.), 866 

Lincoln, Gideon (M. Perkins).. . 489 

Lincoln, Lydia (John Joy) 127 

Lincoln, Nehemiah (Mehetabel), 489 

Lincoln, Nehemiah (1824-) 867 

Little, Elizabeth (Zoroaster, 

Henrv) 358 

Lord, Alvin (S. Bucklin) 844 

Lord, Nellie (Alondo) 844 

Love, Allen J. (1885-) 1469 

Love, John A. (Fanny A.) 1376 

Love, Jov (Rosina Flagg) 1376 

Love, Ne'llie E. (1887-) 1470 

Lo veil, James (Mary Johnson) . . 133 

Lowell, Anna G. (i8s7-) i3°5 

Lowell, Geo. F. (1868-) 1308 

Lowell, Geo. W. (Dorothy A.). . 998 

Lowell, Mary H. (1855-) 1304 

Lowell, Sarah E. M. (1865-) 1307 

Lowell, Thos. J. W. (1858-). . . . 1306 

Lund, Elizabeth (J. Tarbox).... 966 

Lunt, Mr. (C. Williams) 1 1 1 

Lyman, Annette (C. Griswold) . 1026m 

Lyman, Elijah (Sophila) 693 

Lyon, Susan (John Burr) 809 

Maccaffil, Abbie (Alexander) 1 2 1 1 

Maccafhl, John (F. Marston).... 121 1 

McClaren, David (Sarah H.) . . . . 1 1 1 1 

Mc(\illough, Carrie (Silas) mo 

McCullough, Carrie L. (Edwin).. 1107 
Mclntire, Loren (L. Johnson).. . 668j 
McKinney, Clarissa (C. John- 
son) 668e 

Mackinnon, Anne (William). . . . 736 

Mackinnon, Colin (R. Kenney) . 736 

Manchester, Thos. H. (Frances), 1140 

Manierre, Geo. (A. Reed) 1209 

Manierre, Wm. R. (Julia) 1209 

Mansfield, Alta (C. Ruttenbur) . 1371 

Mansfield, Anna (D. Penhollcn).. 1369 

Mansfield, Clavton (1880-) 1374 

Mansfield, Frank W. (1878-) . . . 1373 



INDEX TO SURNAxAIES OTHER TILVX EDSOX 625 



No. 
Mansllulil, Ilannali (E. Blakcs- 

Icc, D. Burhans) 394 

Mansfidd, [ulia (1871-73) 1370 

Mansfield, May (J. Hooker) 1368 

Mansfield, Nelson (Lois) no8 

Mansfield, Sheldon (E. Stewart). 1372 

Mansfield, Dr 394 

Markhani, Irene (Oris) 499 

Marsh, Jerusha (P. White). . ... 825 

Marston, Fanny (J . Maccaftil) . . 1 2 1 1 

Martin, Hannah (A. Hosmer).. . 1357 

Mason, Judith (Freeman) 349 

Mathewsen, Lueius (Harriet). . . 1366 

May, Dorothy (Calvin, In- 

man) 386 

May, George (A. B. Peck) 10260 

Mead, Anne (Martin) 953 

Mead, Elkanah (A. Hathaway). . 953 

Mead, Orilla ( Lewis) 402 

Mehurin, Ephraim * 149 

Mehurin, Jon. (Mary) 87 

Merrill, Flavia (J. Fairchild) .... 405 

Miller, Arthur (Mary S.) 1250 

Mills, J\Iary (S. Blakeslee) 702 

Mitchell, Jennet (D. Bryant) . . . 361 

Mitchell, Sarah ([. Hayward).. . 49 

MofTtit, ( Mary) 599 

Morgan, Justin 337 

Morgan, Martha (Amasa) 337 

Morse, Wilsi.m (Matilda) 900 

^ Morton, Hannah (Amasa) 337 

\_JVIorton, Oliver (H. Gillett) 337 

'Moulton, Benjamin (S. Johnson), 340a 

Mdulton, Chloe (Hiram) 9^24 

Moulton, Salmon (S. Johnson).. 340b 

Munger, Mary (Joseph) . 984 

Murdoch, Andrew (Harriet). . . . 896 

Negus, Prudy (D. Blakesle) . . . . 705 

Nelson, John D. (Anna Orr).. . . 828 

Nelson, Martha D. (Cyrus) 828 

Nelson, Nellie (M. R. Peck) 1026? 

Newton, Thankful (J. Wash- 

Inirn) i77 

Nichols, Aaron f. (Rose) 1299 

Nichols, Alex. D. (1887-) 14,^8 

Nichols, Huldah (Cyrenus) 761 

Nightingale, Mary (E. Warren). 121 

Moble, Elnathan 400 

Nol)le, Pomeroy (Hannah) 31)0 

Noble, Sarah (Wvllvs) 400 

North, Hannah (Wyllys F.) 790 

Norton, Adelisa (Edwin) 109=; 

Norton, l-:d-vard (Sarah) 835b 

Norton. Hannah (Al)it'l) 242 

Norton. John 242 

Norton, Lucy (William) 957 

Noxon, Dr. (Anna Lane) 394 

Noyes, Eiihraim (S. Dike) 517 

Noyes. IKmu-v A, (1820-) 9^5 

Noyes, Jacob (Olive) 5x7 

Noyes, Lewis E. (1823-) 916 



No. 

Nye, (Elizabeth) 548 

Nye, Isabella (Hiram) 1484 

Oatley, Wm. R. (M. Bigelow)... 1316 

Oliver, (ohn 569 

Oliver, Mary A. (Galen) 569 

Orcutt, Deiiverance ( j . Wash- 
burn) 258 

Orcutt, Ihinnah (J. I-\iller) 567 

Orcutt, Ichabod (Susanna ), 214 

Orcutt, Joanna (Benjamin) 64 

Orcutt, Mehetabel (Henry) 748 

Orcutt, vSolomon (M. Rockwell).. 321 

Orcutt, Susanna (Samuel) 16 

Orcutt, Susanna (John) 214 

Orcutt, Su,sanna (Timothy) 321 

Orcirtt, Warren (S. Johnson) . . . 668g 

Orcutt, Williahi (J. Washburn).. 64 

Orr, Anna M. (J. "Nelson) 828 

Orr, Julia A. (B. Harris) 1042 

Osborn, Clarissa C. (Joshua).. . . 917 1 

Otis, Bethiah (J. Ihulson) 196 

Packard, Abiali (F. Howard)... 276 

Packard, Abiel (_S. Ames). 269 

Packard, Abijah (Anne Ft)bes).. 195 

Packard, Alj/heus (1815-) 887 

Packard, Anne (Elijah) 113 

Packard, (Arilla) (18 10-) 885 

Packard, Austin (180 i-) 616 

Packard, Azor (1790-) 615 

Packard, Bethiah. 82 

Packard, Daniel (M. Harris). ... 93 

Packard, David C. (1824-) 890 

Packard, Elizabeth (Jacob).... 260 

Packard, George (Mary) 87 

Packard, George i44 

Packard, George (A. Esty) 274 

Packard, TIaimah (William)... . 276 

Packard, Hannah ([oeD 306 

Packard, Henry A. (181 8-) 888 

Packard, Ichabod^ 148 

Packard, Israel (Susannah) 511 

Packard, Israel (1813-) 880 

Packard, Jacob (D. Perkins) 284 

Packard, Jacob (1780-) 613 

Packard. James ( j . Keith) 120 

Packard, Jane (M. Kingman).. 510 

Packard, Jemima (Ichabod). . . 120 

Packard, "tesse (1782-) 614 

Packard. Job 84 

Packard, [ob (H. Allen) 05 

Packard, Job (Rachel ). . . 05 

Packard, Jonathan 145 

I'ackard, Jonathan (S. Alger).. . 511 

Packard. Josiah (1S02-) 881 

Packard, Liberty (1S08-) 884 

Packard, Lucy (Ebenezcr) 121 

Packard. Lvdia '4'' 

Packard. Mary (Abiezer) mi 

Packard. Matilda (Z. Gumev) . 514 

Packard. Melvin (1S04-) 88 2 



026 INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER THAN EDSON 



Packard, Nathaniel 

Packard, Nchemiah (Sik-nce). . . 

Packard, Oliver (Relief) 

Packard, Paul 

Packard, Philip (Martha) 

Packard, Rebecca 

Packard, Rhoda (Guy) 

Packard, Robert (L. Titus) 

Packard, Samuel (Elizabeth). . . 
Packard, .Samuel (E. Lathroj)). . 

Packard, Samuel 

Packard, Samuel (Anne ) , 1 1 1 

Packard, Sarah (Josiah) 

Packard, Sarah (1. Fuller) ... 199, 

Packard, Sarah (Z. Shaw) 

Packard, Scth (M. Bryant) 

Packard, Sidney (1806-) 

Packard, Silence (1750-) 

Packard, Simeon (Hannah) 

Packard, Simeon 

Packard, Soloinon (H. Bailey).. 
Packard, Susanna (S. Rickard). 

Packard, Susanna (182 1-) 

Packard, Thomas (Joanna) 

Packard, Thoinas (M. Howard). 

Packard, Vesta (1778-) 

Packard, Zacheus (S. Howard). . 

Page, Virginia C. (Cyrus) 

Page, Wm. Rufus (]. Churchill).. 

Paine, Alice B. (i8'74-76) 

Paine, Clara L. (1869-) 

Paine, Cynthia (Andrew) 

Paine, Henry (1867-68) 

Paine, Irving H. (Ellen) 

Paine, Lucy E. (1872-73) 

Paine, Martin (S. Hatch) ... 

Paine, Mary (Justus) 

Paine, Mary (J. Carnes) 

Paine, Ruby H. (1880-) 

Paine, Velma (1891-) 

Palmer, Edgar (Annette) 

Pancoast, Archer V. (M. L. 

Jollv) 

Parker, Abbott (1855-) 

Parker, Abigail (1845-68) 

Parker, Alfred B. (1849-) 

Parker, Daniel 

Parker, Frank G. (1842-) 

Parker, George (b. and d. 1841), 

Parker, George (1852-55) 

Parker, Jennet (1847-49) 

Parker, Levi (H. Giddings) 

Parker, Levi B. (Fanny) 

Parker, Mary (Josiah). 

Parker, Mary A. (E. Weld) 

Parker, Rebecca J. (Theodore).. 

Parker, Samuel (A. Cutler) 

Parker, William (1861-) 

Parnel, ■ (Nehemiah S.) . . . . 

Parris, Edward L. (M. I. Du 

Bois) 

Pease, Geo. 



F. (K. E. Crafts). 



No. 

87 

93 

284 

83 
274 

147 
603 

105 

50 

50 
81 

> 113 
62 

218 
202 
121 
883 
183 

195 

452 

306 

265 

8S9 

285 

2S5 

612 

62 

12 16 

1 2 16 

1444 
1442 

131 7 
1441 

1313 
1443 
1317 
673 
1314 
1445 
1446 
1407 

1408 

1040 

1036 

1038 

log 

1035 

1034 

1039 

1037 

731 

731 

109 

734 
416 
416 
1041 
481 

450 
1323 



No. 

Pease, (Dorothy Goodale) . 663 

Peck, Aurelia B. (Geo. May).. . .10260 
Peck, Cassius (L. A. Sprague) . . . io26p 
Peck, Marcus (M. Wilcox, A. 

Wheatlev) io2 6n 

Peck, Marshall R. (N. Nelson) .. io26q 

Peck, Reuben (Hannah) 694 

Peckham, Joanna (H. Sheldon), 598 

Penhollon.'D. (A. Mansfield). . . 1369 

Perkins, Abigail (1758-) 297 

Perkins, Abraham (1755-) 292 

Perkins, Asenath (Ezra) 189 

Perkins, Benjamin (1768-) 301 

Perkins, Charles (A. Waterman) 

187, 1S9 

Perkins, Deborah (Benjamin)... 186 

Perkins, Dorothy (J. Packard).. 284 

Perkins, Ebenezer (M. Pratt).. . 415 

Perkins, Elizabeth (B. Leach) . . 92 

Perkins, Isaac (Joanna) 122 

Perkins, Isaac (1757—) 293 

Perkins, Jacob (i 763-) 295 

Perkins, Jacob 303 

Perkins, Joanna (1761— ) 294 

Perkins, Josiah 123 

Perkins, Josiah (1762-) 299 

Perkins, Mark (D. Whipple). . 122, 123 

Perkins, Mark (1760-) 298 

Perkins, Martha (T- Byram). ... 60 

Perkins, Martha (Samuel) 88 

Perkins, Martha (G. Lincoln) . . . 489 

Perkins, Mehetabel (i 756-) 296 

Perkins, Minerva (Allen) 405 

Perkins, Nathan (M. Leonard).. 88 

Perkins, Olive (Nehemiah) 187 

Perkins, Samuel (Lavina) 289 

Perkins, Sarah ( 1 766-) 300 

Perkins, Sarah (S. Sinclair) 395 

Perkins, Shepard 304 

Perkins, Silvia (1769-) 302 

Perkins, Solomon (Sarah) 161 

Perkins, Solomon (L. Sprague).. 161 

Perkins, Thomas (M. Pratt). ... 186 

Perkins, Zadoc (H. Packard). . . 276 

Perrin, Mary (J. Y. Dewey) .... 966 

Phelps, Susanna (I. Pinnev) . . . . 32^ 

Phillips, Ansel E. (1836-).' 1481 

Phillijjs, Benjamin 126 

Phillips, Elizabeth 46 

Philli])s, Eunice L. (1840-) 1482 

Phillips. Francis R. (1826-). . . . 1479 

Phil]ii)S, John E. (1829) 1480 

Philli])S, Joshua (1662-) 21 

Phillijis, Julia (1824) 1478 

Phillips, Mary (b. and d. 1660).. 21 

Philliixs, Mary (1661-) 21 

Phillips, Nicholas 21 

Philli]:)s, Nicholas 45 

Phillij^s, Richard (Mary , 

Elizabeth) 21 

Phillips, Richard 47 

Phillips, Samuel 48 



INDEX T(^ SURNAMES OTHER THAN l^DSON 627 



No. 

I'liilltps. 'I'liciinas ( I lannali) 134 

Pierce, ElislTa (Sarali) 107 

Pierce, Elisha (M. Howard) 107 

Pierce, Sarah 220 

Pinney, Isaac (S. Phelps) 323 

Pinney, John 323 

F'inne3\ Sarah (josiah) 323 

Poolen, Mrs. Harriet (WilHs) . . . i i 5O 

Pope, Thomas (Huklah) 158 

Porter, George B 658 

Potter, Aurora F. ( 1836-) 1154 

Potter, Charles (1834-) ii5,i 

Potter, George O. (1828-) 1151 

Potter, Horace (Fanny A.) 770 

Potter, Horace S. (182 2-) i i4U 

Potter. Obed E. (1826-) 11 30 

Potter, Oscar (E. Blakeslee) 703 

Potter, Truman (M. Blakeslee).. 701 

Potter, Viola (1843-) i i 55 

Potter, Williain (1832-) i 152 

Pratt, Abigail (T. Conant) 547 

Pratt. Charit\- (j. Washburn)... iqj 

Pratt, Danief. . ." 315 

Pratt, John (Elizabeth) ........ 533 

Pratt, Mary (T. Perkins) 186 

Pratt. Mary (E. Perkins) 413 

Pratt, Ruth (A. Kingman) 313 

Pulsi])her, Elias (S. Lane) 826 

Pulsipher, Martha (Othnicl W.), 826 

Randall, Mary (William) . 276 

Randall, Rebecca (Peter) ...... 200 

Raymond, William (Lydia) Q62 

Read, Mary (J. Allen) 106, 134 

Reed, Anne (G. Manicrre) i2og 

Reed, Chas. B. (1806-) 509 

Reed. Edw. M. (Fanny) i 'i S3 

Reed, Edwin (1804-) 308 

Reed. Emma C. (1793-) 304 

Reed, Ezekiel (Rebecca) 216 

Reed, Ezekiel (Mary ) 216 

Reed, Isaac (M." Blanchard. 

Miriam) C)4i) 

Reed. j<)se])h E. (1801-) 307 

Reed, josiah (1799-) 306 

Reed, Lucy (Pliny) 626 

Reed, Lvdia (1797-) • ■ • ■ 303 

Reed. Mehetabel (Pliny) 626 

Rice, Anne M 804 

Rice, Josei)h (Elizabeth) 411 

Rice, tosei-)h M S03 

Rich. Chas. M. (Elizabeth) 1 1 03 

Richard. Hannah (|. Bvram).. . 30 

Rieliards. Elizabeth (Noah). ... 137 

Richards, Gershom (Susanna)... 266 

Richards. Mary (A. Kingman).. 313 

Richards, Susanna (Josiah) 3 1 <) 

Richards, 'i'imothy (Sarah) 136 

Richards. William 313 

Richardson, l-'meline ( W. Drew), i i 14 

Rickard, Calvin (1796-) 532 

Rickard. I low (1790-) 330 



No. 

Rickard, .Salmon ((Jlive) 263 

Rickard, Salmon ( i 799-) 33 ^ 

Rickard, Seth (S. Packard) 263 

Rickard, Seth (1788-) 349 

Rickard. Thomas (1794-) 331 

Rider, Aaron (R. Foster) 934 

Ri(U-r, Rosabelle S. (josiah). ... 812 

Rider, Silas (H. Clark, Joanna), 954 

Ring, Gertrude (J. Bonesteel) . . 799 

Ripley, Hannah (Samuel) 344 

Rollins. l-21iza W. (Jarvis B.) . . . ri8i 

Robins. James (J. De Kay) 1181 

Robinson, Abigail (J. Fobes) . . . 112 

Robin.son, Dyer (A. Stetson).... 412 

Robinson, Increase (Hannah A.). 412 

Rol)inson, Jas. (M. Downer).... 643 

Rol)inson, Thos. P. (1816-22)... 803 

Rockwell, Mary (S. Orcutt).... . 321 

Rogers, Fannie (Charles) 1094 

Rogers, Sarah (A. Wilcox) 436 

Rogers, (Mary) 33S 

Rojies, Chas. II. (J. Hale) 1221 

Ropes, Fanny (Robert S.) 1221 

Rosecrance, Chas. (1823-39).... 1093 

Rosecrance, Daniel (1838-64)... 1097 

Rosecrance. Edwin (A. Norton).. 1093 

Rosecrance. Jas. E. (F. Rogers), 1094 

Ro.secrance, Jane E. (1831-38).. 1096 

Rosecrance, John W. (Mary). . . 736 

Rowland, vSeth (Lydia) ...'..... 848 

Ruggles, Hannah (Abijah) 328 

Ruggles, [oseph ^28 

Russell, Abbie (S. Childs).. . .• . . 1203 

Ruttenlntr, Chas. (A. Mansfield), 1371 

Ryder. Eimice A. (Nathan) .... 740 

Sanders, Hannah (E. Cajiron) . . 1009 

Sargent, Henry G. (Sophia) .... 1137 

Saunders, Sarah (Silas) 923 

Saxbury, B. (Dorcas) 303 

Scott, Sarah (Obed) 777 

Scrimgeour, Jean (R. Scriin- 

geour) 126S 

Scrimgeour. Robert (J. Scrim- 
geour) 1 26S 

Scrimgeour, Wm. R. (Mary).. . . 126S 
Seayer, Congdon (R. Burling- 

game) 1,1^7 

Seayer. Mary F. (F. Sylyester). . 13S7 

Seaver, Robert W. (Anna) 370 

Sedgel)ur, Theodore (Lucy). ... 767 

Shaqie, Elyirah (Josiah).. SoS 

Sharpe, Gibbons S,i> 

Shaw, David 210 

Shaw. I-'lorence W. (iSqo-) i.i-7 

Shaw, Judith ( John') 202 

Shaw, Lyilia (David) .^ 1 '^ 

vShaw. Marjorie (1893-).. . 1 ; "^ 

Shaw. Orra (Min(U ) 104 4 

Sliaw, kichanl E. (1S83-) 132(1 

Shaw. Susannah (N. Bvram). . 

Sli.iw. W.ilPr C (M.-irv"! 1044 



628 INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER THAN EDSON 



No. 

Shaw, Zcchariah (S. Packard). . 202 

Shedd, Joel (Elizal)eth) 368 

Sheldon, Henry (J. Peckham) . . 598 

Sheldon, Joseph (Irene).. 593 

Sheldon, Sarah (Freeman) 598 

Shepardson, Isaac 563 

Shepardson, Mary W 933 

Shepardson, Nathaniel (Sarah, 

Anne, vS. Dickerman, M. 

French) 563, 568 

Shepardson, Nathaniel 934 

Shepardson, Sarah A. (1816-). . 935 

Shurtleff, Abigail (J. Dunbar). . 93 

Shurtleff, Clarissa (Ophir) 430 

Silvester, Cath. (D. Burham) . . . 394 

Silvester, Peter (J. Van Schaack) 394 

Sinclair, Anne (1806-) 395 

Sinclair, David B. (1807-) 395 

Sinclair, Geo. W. (1811-) 395 

Sinclair, Hiram (1817-) 395 

Sinclair, Joseph (1809-) 395 

Sinclair, Orlinda (1813-) 395 

Sinclair, Samuel (S. Perkins, F. 

Bigclow) 395 

Sinclair, Virtue E. (1S16-) 39s 

Sinkler, Richard (M. Cilley) 395 

Smith, Abigail (Stephen) 397 

Smith, Adoniram J. (1828-). . . . 1002 

Smith, Albert....." 858 

Smith, Chas. H. (1856-) 1257 

Smith, Dwight (Lavinia) . 928 

Smith, Ebenezer (Lydia A.). . . . 664 

vSmith, Edson H. (1889-) 1466 

Smith, Ellen V. (1838-) . 1254 

Smith, Frank W. (Mary) iS59 

Smith, Frank W. (1892-) 1468 

Smith, Frederick B. (1855-) . . . . 1256 

Smith, Harrison 859 

Smith, Henry D. (1849-) 1255 

Smith, John (Hannah) 484 

Smith, John 484 

Smith, Josiah E. (1820-) looi 

Smith, Laura A. (Cyrus). ...... 196 

Smith, Laura D. (1840-) 12 S3 

Smith, Marie O. (1891-) 1467 

Smith, Mary A. W. (1843-) 1254 

Smith, Rachel (G. Alden) 750 

Smith, Rachel 861 

Smith, Rebecca (Timothy) 331 

Smith, Rebecca (O. Graves).. . . 333 

Smith, Salome 860 

Smith, Sarah P. (181S-) 1000 

Smith, Thomas (Olive) 3-56 

Smith, Wm. D. (1837-) 1251 

Smith, ■ (Jane) 958 

Snell, Anne (N. Byram) 55 

Snow, David (J. Hay ward) 125 

Snow, Eliab (17 58-) 389 

Snow, Eunice (Alfred) 383 

Snow, James 162 

Snow, James (1761-) 390 

Snow, Joanna (Nathaniel) 125 



No. 

Snow, William (M. Washburn) . . 162 

Soley, Cath. H. (Alvin) 651 

Soley, John (R. Hanley) 651 

Sornberger, Aug. (Ai^minda).. . . 764 

Sornberger, Geo. H. (1855-).. . . 1132 

Sornberger, Mary R. (1847-66).. 1131 

Soudcr, Jennie (William) 1249 

vSouthworth, Sarah (Peter, 116 

David) 104 

Speer, Samuel (Ruby) 575 

Spellman, Lyman (Susanna).... 501 

Spencer, Daniel (Mary J.) 1292 

Spencer, Wm., Rev. (Lucinda).. 763 

Spraguc, Benjamin (E. Hchnes), 192 

Sprague, Chloe (1804-) 447 

Sprague, Ephraim (Lavina) .... 192 

Sprague, Ephraim (1787-) 444 

S]5rague, Eunice (1790-) 445 

Sprague, Harriet (T. Johnson) . . 668i 

Sprague, Holmes (1783-) 443 

Sprague, Jon. (L. Leavitt) 89 

Si)rague, Lavina (j 799-) 446 

S])rague, Lima A. (C. Peck). . . . io26p 

Sprague, Lydia (S. Perkins). ... 161 

Spraguc, Mary (Nathan) ....... 89 

Sprague, Myra (1806-) 448 

Srpiier, Elsie M. (Franklin) 12 17 

S(|uier, Stuart C. (C. La Barr) . . 12 17 

Stacey, Jcannie (E. Charlicr). . . 1208 

Staddle," Rose (Wilhs) 1 156 

Staples, Jacob (Lois) 153 

Stebbins, Martha (Josiah) 502 

Stedwell, Milan (Martha) 1297 

Steele, Lucy (Henry) 1312 

Stetson, Abigail (D. Robinson).. 412 

Stetson, Ethan (H. Baker) 732 

Stetson, Fanny (Asahel) 406 

Stetson, Mary A. (Henry) 732 

Stevens, Edith (1883-) ^337 

Stevens, Genevieve (1881-) ^2>i(^ 

Stevens, Imogene (18S5-) 1338 

Stevens, John E. (1887-) ^339 

Stevens, John L. (Rowena) 1087 

vStevcns, Olive (187 7-) ^335 

vStevens, Thaddeus (1889-) 1340 

Stewart, Eliza (S. Mansfield) ... 1372 

Stewart, Lydia (Alfred) 383. 

Stewart, Oliver (C. Jacques) .... 383 

Stiles, Sophia (Jerah) 687 

Stillson, Garry (Emily) 965 

vStimpson, Nabby (E. Bennett).. 862 

Stimson, Clara A. (Rufus) 1161 

Stimson, Horace (Cynthia ), 1161 

Stone, William (Roselle) 1440 

Storey, Martha (William) 976 

Story, Harriet (Loring) 921 

Stoughton, Abigail (J. Willis)... 91 

Stratton, Caleb A. (Emily) 692 

Stratton, Carlos (A. Brown). . . . 1026I 

Stratton, Cornelius io2 6g 

Stratton, Emily (N. Graves). . . . io26g 

Stratton, Harriet (Geo. Cook). . 1026J 



BB-lO"? 



INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER TIIAX EDSOX 629 



No. 

Stratton, Lucia (F. Hoadlcy) . . . loiOk 

Stratton, Martha (E. Holt)' 10261 

vStrol)ridoe, TuUy W. (Mary) 979 

Strong, Bcrnicc (Grant) 1364 

Strong, Eleanor (W. Dean) 26 

Swails, Eliz. M. (John M.) 1 143 

Sylvester, Anna G. (C. Dingley), 1384 

Sylvester, Clintha (David) 486 

Sylvester, Emily A. (H. Hunt).. 1385 

Sylvester, Frederick (M. Seaver), 1887 

Sylvester, Henry (Fanny) 1 148 

Sylvester, Katie (1863-64) 1386 

Tarl)ox, Elizal)eth (C. Dewey).. 1276 

Tarliox, James (E. Lund) 966 

Tarbox, Lvmd (Susan) 966 

Tarbox, Wm. L. (C. Foster). . . . 1275 

Tajdor, Leniuel (A. White). .... 393 
Taylor, Rebecca (Jesse, Edw. 

Adams) :59 ^ 

Taylor, Sarah M. (John G.) 766 

Teeters, Rosa (Chauncey) 12 10 

Tenney, Abbie E. (1876-) 1229 

Tcnney, Angic T. (1S70— ) 12 28 

Tenney, Marquis (Hannah) 838 

Terry, Alta N. (Henry) 1)^2 

Terry, James (S. Wait) 952 

Thachcr, Mary [ ^j ;, 

1 hacher, Emily \ ^ 

Thatcher, (Martha Morgan) , 337 

Thayer, Alex. (Lucy) 288 

Thayer, Anne (Beniamin) 114 

Thayer, Earl (1787-) 628 

Thayer, Huldah E. (1795-) 630 

Thayer, Jeremiah (T. Leavitt) . . ^07 

Thayer. Richard (S. White) "i i 4 

Thayer, Richard (Eunice) 307 

Thayer, Richard (1798-) 631 

Thomas, Emma (James) 1089 

Thomas, John (C. Williams). . . . 1089 

Thomas, Martha (Olx-d) ()i 

Thompson, Agnes B. (Burtis)... 1350 
Thompson, Charity (Calvin).. . . 322 
Thompson. Charles (Elizabeth). 503 
Thompson, (lilbert M. (Catha- 
rine) 135- 

Thom])Son, .Matthew (Deliorah 

) 322 

Throop, Nathaniel 656 

Throop, Sarah (Joseph) 656 

Thurston, Daniel (Mary) ^8=^ 

Tiffany, Seth (Olive) . .' 398 

Titus, Lydia (R. Packard, Jes.se 

Packard) i o s 

Tooke, Michael (Mary) 385 

Torrey, Mrs. Urzah L. (Amasa) 337 

Townsend, Helen (B. Wood). . . 8^2 

Trask. Elizabeth (Al)ell) 166 

Trask, William (Bethiah ).. 166 

Traub (Alfaretta) 1401 

Treadwell. I^N'man (I'^milv) 06:; 

Trimbell, Eliza (\V. Beekley)... 840 



No. 

Trooj), Sarah (E. A\'eston) 972 

Turner, George 24 

Turner, Mary (Jo.seph) 24 

Tur])well, James (Silence) 181 

Tute, Sarah (E. Bardwell) 331 

Van Alstine, John S. (Olive).. . . 783 

Van Brunt, Arthur (Ethel T.) . . 1222 

Van Brunt, Chas. II. (A. Henry), 1222 

Van Deusen, L. T. (Frances). . . 1140 

Van Deusen, Marcia A. (Walter), 1141 

Van Deusen, Mary (Hiram). . . . 1138 

Van vSchaack, Jane (P. vSih^cster) , 394 
Van Velsor, Henry (M. Dusen- 

bury) 1 2 16 

Van Velsor, Mary E. (Cyrus). . . 1216 

Vaughan, Caroline (Albert) 835d 

Vinal, Issacher 213 

Vinal, Mary (Joseph) 213 

Vining, vSarah (N. Whitman) .... 10 1 

Vredenlnirgh, Margaret (Calvin) 765 

Wade, Calvin (1800-) 442 

Wade, Celia, (1782-) 43S 

Wade, Naomi (1787-) 440 

Wade, Robert (Mary) 190 

Wade. Sarah (1784-) 439 

Wade, Thomas (S. Latham).. . . 190 

Wade, Thomas (1792-) 441 

Wait, Susan (J . Terry) 952 

Walsworth, Anna (Barnal)as). . . 384 

Walsworth. James 384 

Warden, Alice H. (Marshall) 1321 

Warden, Andrew H. (L. l-'lint).. 1321 
Warren, Ebenezi'r (M. Nightin- 
gale) 121 

Warren, II. (Eliza) 4()i 

Warren, Mary (Ebenezer) 121 

\\'ash, Harriet ((^alen) 940 

Wasliburn, .\ngelina (Ezra) .... 460 

Washlmrn, Anna E. (18 10-).... 467 

Washburn, Dinah (Benjamin). . 281 

Washburn, Elisha (M. French).. 563 

Washlmrn, Eliza H. (1803-).... 464 

Washburn, IClizabeth (James)... io(> 

Washburn. Emily II. ('1812-)... 468 

Washburn. Ezra E. (1S01-; d.y.), 463 

Washburn. Ezra E. (1S06-). . . . 4(15 

Waslil)urn, Hannah (I. Howe).. 407 

Washburn. Hepzibah (B. Leach). 02 

Washburn. lli'])zibah (Lewis)... 177 

\Vashl)urn, Jane (W. OreuttV . . 64 

Washburn, Jen-miah (Sarah), . . 197 

Washburn, Jiremiah (C. Pratt). 107 

Washburn, Jeremiah . 460 

Washburn, Jonathan (T. New- 
ton) 177 

Washburn. Joseph (D. Orcutt).. 25S 

Washburn, Josiah (Mary ).. loS 

Washburn. Judith (S. Kiiigmanl. 



630 INDEX TO SURNAMES OTHER TPIAN EDSON 



y 



No. 

Washburn, Martha (Ehjah) 258 

Washburn, Mary (W. Snow).... 162 

Washljurn, Mary (Levi) 278 

Washburn, Rebecca (D. John- 
son) 96 

Washburn, Rebecca (S. Alden) . . 108 

Washburn, Robie S. (1808-) .... 466 
Waterman, Abigail (C. Perkins, 

187, 189 

Waters, Mary (Benjamin) 951 

Waters, Simeon (H. Haines).... 951 

Webb, Hiram (EHzabeth) 679 

Weeks, Ebenezer (P. Heath) 605 

Weld, Ezra G. (M. Parker) 734 

Weld, Mary A. P. (George) 734 

Wells, Mrs. Lydia (Oramel) 408 

Wentworth, Eliza (Ezra) 440 

West, Timothy (Ziba) 291 

Westcott, Mary E. (Alondo) 844 

Weston, Abner (Huldah ) . . 972 

Weston, Edmund (Sarah, S. 

Troop, Mrs. A. Bradford,).. 972 

Weston, Edmund (1830-) 1285 

Weston, Mary E. (1839-) 1287 

Weston, vSarah O. (1837-) 1286 

Wheatley, Adeline M. (M. Peck), io26n 

Whcatley, Lucy (S. Bigelow).. . ion 

Wheatley, Lydia (N. Paine). ... 13 13 

Wheatley, Mary H. (Jcrah) 1014 

Wheeler, Addie (Chauncey) 12 10 

Whetherill, Margarette (T. 

Diehl) 1219 

Whipple, Dorothy (M. Perkins), 

122, 123 

White, Abigail (H. Kingman). . 277 

White, Abigail (L. Tavlor) 393 

White, Albert E. (i84'i-73) 1202 

White, Andrew (Elizabeth) 155 

White, Clarissa E 1200 

White, Dency (EHiah) 67s 

White, Luke (Clarissa) 825 

White, Mary (Salmon) 682 

White, Mary M 1201 

White, Phineas (J. Marsh) 825 

White, Sarah E i 203 

White, Susannah (R. Thayer) ... 114 

White, William '. 675 

White, (Nathan) 380 

Whitman, Jonathan (Bethiah).. loi 

Whitman, Nicholas (S. Vining).. loi 

Whitney, Chauncey P. (1812-).. 980 

Whitney, Constance (1815-).... 981 

Whitney, Parker (Sarah) 639 

Whittakcr, Prudence (Eliab).... 324 

Wilber, Perlee B. (M. Cole) 769 

Wilcox, Amos (S. Roger.s) 456 

Wilcox, Mary E. (M. Peck) io26n 



No. 

Wilcox, wSibyl (Cyrus) 456 

Wilcox, Silas, Dr. (Susan) 459 

Wilder, Mary (Chester) 680 

Wildey, James (May H.) 1391 

Williams, Anne (Jesse) 493 

Williams, Catharine ( Lunt, 

Earl, Abiezer) in 

Williams, Catharine (J. Thomas), 1089 

Williams, Geo., Rev.(ElizalK'th) , 971 

Williams, Hannah (S. Alden). . . 574 

Williams. L Marvin (Mary) 403 

Williams, Josiah (H. Kingman).. 493 

Williains, Louisa (1841-) 1284 

Williams, Mary (18^-) 1283 

Williams, Othniel (D. Field).. . . 430 

Williams, Sarah (B. Dean) 51 

Williams, Soviah (Ophii") 430 

Williams, Thomas (Mary ).. 19 

Willis, Anne (1787-) 373 

Willis, Azariah (Abigail) 341 

Willis, Cyrus (1797-) 377 

Willis, Daniel (Zilpah) 159 

Willis, Daniel (K. Wilhs) 159 

Willis, Daniel E. (1794-) 376 

Willis, Elienezer (M. Jackson). . 157 

Willis, Elam (Lucy) 401 

Wilhs, Ehzabeth (1784-) 372 

Willis, Galen (1800-) 378 

Willis, Jonathan (A. Stoughton), 91 

Willis, "Keturah (Obed). .' 91 

Willis, Keziah (D. Wilhs) 159 

Willis, Keziah (1779-) 369 

Willis, Mary (Noah) 157 

Willis, Mary (1790-) 374 

Willis, Roxana (1792-) 375 

Willis, Susannah (1782-) 371 

Willis, Zerviah (j. Keith) 494 

Willis, Zilpah (1780-)... 370 

Willis, — (Abigail) 546 

Wilson, Henry S. (1849-) 1289 

Wilson, John A., Rev. (Olivia). . 975 

Wilson, John A. (1856-) 1290 

Wilson, Mary C. (1842-) 1288 

Winnett, John (Anna) 343 

Wood , Benj . H . ( H . Townsend) . . 832 

Wood, Elizabeth (E. Allen) .... 286 

Wood, Fanny C. (Franklin) .... 832 

Wood, Jonathan (A. Packard).. 113 

Woodward, Mary (F. Blakeslee), 700 

Woodward, Roxalana (Leonard) , 646 

Worden, John L. (Anna) 1207 

Worden, John L. (Olivia ).. 1207 

Wright, Aehsah E. (Elijah) 1492 

Wright, Boultwood 1492 

Wright, Mary (W. Jarvis) 179 

Yemans, Prudence (S. Dewey) . . 966 









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